


Emergence

by GillianInOz



Category: Endeavour, The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Episode 4:02 Canticle, Forced Bonding, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sentinels and Guides are known, Set in 1968
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 12:01:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12276078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GillianInOz/pseuds/GillianInOz
Summary: When Morse is poisoned by a murderer his latent Sentinel abilities emerge. In a world where Sentinels and Guides are well known, how will he cope with the change, and what about the fallout for his destined Guide?





	Emergence

Strange slammed the front door open and raced into the airy foyer, Thursday at his heels. The bigger man ran across the wide expanse, wiping sweat out of his eyes as he called.

“Morse? Morse?”

“Wait,” Thursday said urgently, and suddenly from above they heard it, a cry, building in intensity into a scream, a hoarse, masculine voice.

“Morse,” Thursday said and they ran up the stairs, Strange’s longer, younger legs carrying him into the room an instant before his governor, and just in time to grab the upraised arm of the young woman with the dagger in her hand. Moments before she could plunge it into Morse.

“Morse,” Thursday dropped to his knees and reached for the trembling man, looking for a wound. And then his heart froze in his chest as Morse cried out again, batting his hand away, scrambling into the corner like a frightened animal.

“What have you given him?” Thursday bawled at the young woman still being held securely by Strange. “What have you given him?”

Her lips worked silently, she seemed transfixed by the sight of Morse hunched into the corner, sobs racking his lean frame, face buried in his arms.

“You’re all right, Morse,” Thursday said desperately, hands hovering over the wide, quivering shoulders as Morse wept and shook. 

“Was it LSD?” Strange asked her, shaking her like a doll.

“Christ,” Thursday muttered, the image of Nick Wilding screaming in his arms after he’d been overdosed with that poison clear in his mind.

“What you take in is what you find,” Emma said eerily. “What’s in there, Morse?”

At her words Morse’s sobbing moans grew louder and he scrabbled against the wall as if trying to claw his way out.

“Get her out of here,” Thursday ordered. “Call an ambulance, and Strange?”

The big sergeant paused in the doorway. “Find out what she gave him, understand?”

Strange nodded, his wide, usually amiable face hard as stone.

Left alone with Morse Thursday desperately looked around the room, trying to figure out what he could do to protect him. Could he risk leaving him? Maybe find a blanket, something to wrap him in? 

Suddenly Morse was grabbing at the wall as if trying to stand, and Thursday’s heart leapt with hope. Perhaps it hadn’t been LSD, perhaps whatever she’d poisoned him with was already wearing off.

But Morse was still shaking and crying, huge gasping, sobbing, breaths that hurt Thursday’s chest to hear them. His hands were tearing at the wall as if he were trying to climb it, desperately fleeing whatever hunted him in his dreams.

“Just try and calm down, Morse,” Thursday begged. “Help is coming, I promise.”

But Morse was beyond hearing now, at least hearing anything from the real world. With a painful gasp he flung himself away from the wall and stumbled to his knees onto the hard parquet floor.

“Easy there,” Thursday said, desperate to grab him and stop him from injuring himself, but terrified to put hands on him when just a touch might trigger even more of the horrors the poison in his system was bringing to life.

He remembered DeBryn’s description of the effects of LSD, violent hallucinations that were so real the sufferers would fling themselves out of windows or jump off buildings to escape them. And this house was huge, with a wide wooden staircase and large open windows. 

Thursday couldn’t take the chance of Morse getting away from him in this condition.

So when Morse found a burst of strength and scrambled up to his feet, breaking for the open door, Thursday had no choice but to grab him and bring him down.

888

“In the lemonade,” Emma was sobbing. “I put it in the lemonade.”

“You better not be lying to me,” Strange said, his huge hands biting into her wrists. 

“I’m not, I’m not,” she said, and then collapsed onto her knees when he let go of her. In a moment he had a handcuff around her wrist and the other clicked around the steering wheel of the Jag.

“Requesting an update on that ambulance,” Strange said into the radio and after a crackle of static the operations officer reported it was still ten minutes away.

“Get hold of them and the hospital,” Strange ordered. “Tell them Detective Constable Morse has been overdosed on a concoction of henbane, mandrake root and jimsonweed. A kind of herbal equivalent of LSD.”

“Will do,” operations acknowledged. “Over.”

Turning his back on the sobbing girl, Strange hurried back into the house and clattered up the stairs, wondering briefly at the silence. The sound of Morse’s sobbing had followed he and his prisoner down the stairs as he’d dragged her outside, but now there was only an eerie silence from above.

Had Morse passed out? Strange again rubbed the sweat out of his eyes as he reached the landing. Or worse? Had his heart given out under the strain?

He burst into the room to find his governor sitting by the wall where Morse had been cornered. His legs were stretched out in front of him, his jacket open, and Morse was literally curled up in his lap, head under Thursday’s chin, hands wrapped around his broad chest under the jacket. He was still sobbing, but quietly now, heartbreakingly, while Thursday’s big hands stroked his back through the thin, sweat drenched shirt.

“Sir?” Strange said, and then bit his lip as Morse jumped and trembled in Thursday’s grasp.

“You’re all right, sergeant,” Thursday said, his voice low. Morse seemed to burrow deeper under his chin at the words. “If you could just wait downstairs and tell the ambulance attendants that they need to proceed up here quietly and carefully when they arrive. Understand?”

Strange nodded, meeting his governor’s calm face and reading the fear and resolve in his eyes. For some reason Morse was being calmed by this, so this was what Thursday would do.

Whatever it took, Strange thought, selfishly grateful that the horrifying low keening had died into quiet sobs.

Strange backed out of the room.

888

“It’s all right, Morse,” Thursday crooned, feeling the hands clutching him scrabble a little against his back. “You’re all right. I’ve got you, and I won’t let you go, you hear me? I won’t ever let you go.”

Thursday thought Strange must have radioed the ambulance and told them not to use their bells, as the next thing he heard, long minutes later, were footsteps on the stairs and down the landing. Morse heard them too, his sobs grew louder, hitching and echoing from his throat and into Thursday’s rib cage. 

The attendants entered the room quietly, one of them with a syringe already in his hand. Dimly Thursday thought that this was probably the smart thing to do. A pinprick and Morse would be rendered unconscious, delivered from this hell he was living through, able to be taken from Thursday’s arms and bundled into the ambulance and to the hospital.

“No,” Thursday said, lifting one hand from Morse’s back. “He doesn’t need that. He’s all right with me. You’re all right, aren’t you, Morse?”

The sobs were dying away as Morse turned his head and pressed it against Thursday’s chest. “That’s right,” Fred said gratefully. “That’s right. Just listen to my heartbeat, you’re with me and I’ll keep you safe. Trust me, all right? Trust me.”

Within a moment Morse was limp in his arms and hands were reaching out for him.

“No,” Thursday said again. “Get a stretcher and I’ll get him on it. No one’s to touch him but me, understand?”

At his growl the white clad men exchanged glances, and then with a nod they disappeared back downstairs.

“Sir?” Strange whispered. “What’s going on? Is he going to be all right?”

“Yes,” Thursday said firmly. He wouldn’t even consider anything else.

888

“This is what he was dosed with." The young physician handed the consultant a notepad with the ingredients and approximate dosage of the poisons used. “As far as we can tell the effects are not dissimilar to LSD, although it’s to be hoped without the lasting effects.”

“And was he administered morphine?” the consultant said, long strides eating up the halls as the junior doctor raced to keep up with him, white coat tails flapping.

“Uh, no, sir,” the junior doctor panted, then skidded to a halt as the consultant stopped dead. “Why on earth not? With this dosage the man must be in full blown psychosis, to say the least.”

“Well, sir,” the junior doctor said. “We seem to have a bit of a situation.”

888

“A Sentinel?” Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright repeated incredulously. “Detective Constable Morse?”

“Yes, Mr Bright,” Dr Stoddard said. “I’m sure it was in his records that he had a family history of Sentinels?”

“I’m equally sure it is not,” Bright said crisply. “I know that young man’s records backwards and forwards, not a word about a Sentinel background.”

“Ah, well,” Dr DeBryn said, and Bright turned his attention to the pathologist. 

“What’s that?”

DeBryn nodded respectfully at Dr Stoddard and answered. “There’s still a lot of apprehension in the more rural areas,” he said in his precise manner. “About revealing too much to the authorities. Sentinels and Guides have been prized for generations, obviously, but in some regions they have long memories of their people being taken away by the government, and before that the aristocracy. Forced into service against their will.”

“But surely there are laws in place to protect Sentinels and Guides these days,” Bright protested. “The Sentinel Guide Guild is more powerful than its ever been.”

The two doctors exchanged wry glances. “Nevertheless,” DeBryn said carefully. “Not everyone trusts these protections. As I said, they have long memories in some places.”

Bright turned this over in his mind. “But I don’t understand Detective Inspector Thursday’s role in this. Surely he’s too old to be the bonded Guide to a Sentinel of Morse’s age?”

“It’s rare,” Stoddard admitted. “But not unknown.”

“Obviously the drug overdose brought on a crisis and Morse’s Sentinel abilities emerged,” DeBryn explained. “Trust Morse to do things the hard way.” His tone was waspish but DeBryn was clearly concerned.

“But are we sure Thursday is Morse’s Guide?” Bright persisted. “Obviously he’s a Guide, that at least is in on record. But couldn’t he just be following his natural instincts to protect a distressed Sentinel? Surely Morse has a younger Guide out there somewhere who could be found?”

“With the severe shortage of Sentinels in proportion to Guides, I imagine they’d be queuing up,” DeBryn said dryly. “Especially police Guides. But it’s not as simple as that.”

“At this moment,” Stoddard interjected. “Inspector Thursday is the only thing stopping Morse from a full blown, possibly permanent fugue. Sentinels don’t deal well with medications at the best of times, but to be poisoned with an overdose of a mind altering drug and have his senses emerge during that episode? Only a bonded Guide could have kept his Sentinel alive this long.”

“But they’ve known one another for three years,” Bright protested. “Surely if Morse was going to emerge he’d have done so earlier? It’s not as if he hasn’t had a few crises to deal with before now,” Bright said acerbically.

Stoddard stroked his chin thoughtfully. He was a tall, distinguished man with a shock of thick, grey hair and heavy horn rimmed glasses. “Three years,” he mused. “And have they been unusually close? Has Inspector Thursday seemed particularly protective of Constable Morse? Does Morse seem… attached to Thursday? More so than you’d usually expect in colleagues anyway?”

“Not unusually so,” Bright said defensively.

“Uh hm,” DeBryn cleared his throat and Bright turned on him.

“All right,” Bright said waspishly. “Perhaps Thursday has defended the man, sometimes more vigorously than one would expect from a senior officer with no prior connection.”

“And Morse is loyal to Thursday to a fault,” DeBryn noted. “Let’s face it, the two of them are a formidable team when they are in harmony, and miserable when they’re at odds.”

“I wouldn’t put it exactly like that,” Bright said sharply.

“Well I would,” DeBryn said, obviously tired of beating around the bush. “And while the powers that be have tried their very best to separate them for the last three years – despite their exemplary work on some extremely complex and dangerous cases – the two of them have fought tooth and nail to stay together.”

“Clearly some kind of bond has been there from the beginning,” Stoddard said, raising both hands in an effort to quell any brewing argument. “But gentlemen, this discussion is pointless. We have a distressed Sentinel in recovery after a severe overdose, and a formidable Guide in full blown protective mode who has barely left his side since they were brought in. At this point he will only leave his Sentinel long enough to perform necessary bodily functions if the large Detective Sergeant swears on his life that he will guard the door and not let anyone else in.”

“Detective Sergeant Strange,” Bright said, visibly calmer now. “A good man. Obviously if it turns out that Thursday is Morse’s Guide then we will accept the situation and move on. I, for one, am not entirely convinced, but at this point it would seem unproductive to try and separate them.”

DeBryn rolled his eyes and crossed his arms defensively. “I’d like to see you try,” he muttered, but Bright ignored him. 

“When Morse is recovered we’ll see what we’ll see,” Bright said.

Dr Stoddard shook his head. “I’m sorry, Chief Inspector,” he said sympathetically. “But the identity of Morse’s Guide at this point is the least of our worries. We still have no idea of the effect of the overdose on Morse’s mind, let alone his senses.”

“Are you saying he might not recover?” Bright appeared genuinely shocked. 

“I’m saying exactly that. Only time will tell as to whether Morse’s mind has been permanently affected. Fortunately he wasn’t dosed with d-lysergic acid diethyl-amide, but the concoction certainly seems to have mimicked the effects of an LSD overdose so far.”

“Worst case scenario,” DeBryn said bluntly. “Is permanent psychosis. A complete dissociation from the real world.”

“My god,” Bright said bleakly. He stiffened his spine. “When will we know?” 

“Time will tell,” Stoddard said. 

888

Fred came out of his light doze when he felt Morse stirring in his arms. Immediately he was back on full alert, looking around the cool, dim room they’d been moved to on arrival in Casualty. The room contained an over large hospital bed and bedside table, and an equally large vinyl armchair. By the shaded window was a neat table and chairs. Everything was coloured a pale, hospital cream, and the lights were recessed into the walls, pleasingly low and non intrusive. 

The room was quiet, unnaturally so for a hospital, but Fred had been nothing but grateful for it since they had been brought here. When Morse had woken after his first period of unconsciousness, it had been with a cry of fright, followed by more of those haunting, keening moans. 

Thursday had pushed aside the orderlies lifting Morse on the bed and taken the tall, lean form in his own arms, laying him on the smooth sheets and unceremoniously climbing up on the bed next to him.

He was beyond caring now about appearances, about the opinions of others. His first and only priority was to protect Morse, to touch him and keep him grounded in the real world while the artificially induced world of his hallucinations ripped and pulled at him.

He’d barely felt the orderlies tug off their shoes, or the light cover that had been thrown over them before they’d withdrawn soft footed.

“You’re all right, Morse,” Thursday said, stroking back sweat soaked hair as Morse stirred, feeling again with dismay the bones of Morse’s rib cage under his fingers. Surely he was too thin? Surely it couldn’t be healthy to be so underweight? 

He should have been feeding him up more, Thursday thought. But for some reason he hadn’t wanted to intrude on the man’s privacy, hadn’t wanted to overstep the mark.

It seemed almost incomprehensible to him now, that thinking. How could it be inappropriate to make sure Morse at least had a good solid meal in him now and then?

“Uhhh,” Morse said, licking at his lips.

Thursday sat up and reluctantly pulled away, reaching for the plastic tumbler by the bed filled with ice chips. A nurse came in every now and then, closely watched by Strange from the doorway, to freshen the water jug and bring in more ice. 

Thursday took one of the ice chips and gently rubbed it against Morse’s cracked lips. After a moment Morse’s tongue came out and gathered up the moisture. With a surge of hope Thursday quickly poured some water into the other tumbler and brought it gently to Morse’s lips, supporting the back of his neck.

Morse licked again at the dampness against his lips, and then swallowed the few drops of water Thursday got down his throat.

“Morse?” Thursday murmured, fumbling to put the tumbler back on the metal bedside table. “Morse?”

Morse’s russet lashes fluttered and he sighed deeply.

“Please, Morse,” Thursday said, like a prayer. He hadn’t talked to any of the quiet doctors who had come in and carefully checked Morse’s vitals. He had done no more than watch them narrowly to ensure they didn’t try to stick any needles in Morse or give him any drugs.

But the memory of Nick Wilding was still in the forefront of his mind, lost from the real world, seeing only what his burned out mind conjured, hearing only god knows what from his fevered, waking dream. 

Was that all that was in store for Morse? Had Thursday kept him alive just to dwell forever in that shadowed, nightmare world?

Death would be better, Thursday thought. 

Morse snuffled again and his eyes finally opened. A giddy hope gripped Thursday’s heart. His pupils were no longer unnaturally dilated, his eyes seemed normal again, albeit swollen and bloodshot from the tears. 

“Morse,” Thursday said gently, willing a response, praying for some flicker of intelligence and recognition in those huge, grey blue eyes.

Morse blinked at him and frowned. “What day is it?” he said hoarsely, and Thursday gripped his own hands tightly together to stop them shaking.

“Corned beef,” he said, not even really sure what day it was, time had blurred so completely for him in this dim, airy room.

Morse blinked again, crinkling his eyes thoughtfully. “Friday,” he said finally in soft satisfaction. “It’s Friday.”

He closed his eyes again as everything in Fred released like a snapped elastic. He pressed his hand to his own eyes in relief, staggered and grateful and near tears.

“Did she confess?” Morse said, and of course that’s the first thing he’d ask. Finish up the case, get it resolved. 

“Yes,” Thursday confirmed, groping for the armchair and sitting down. “At least, Strange managed to get out of her what she’d spiked the lemonade with.”

Morse crinkled his brow, eyes still sleepy. “LSD?” he guessed.

Thursday shuddered. “No, thank god. Some collection of poisonous weeds she’d collected. Henbane was one of them,” he recalled.

Morse looked a little more alert and tried to sit up, instantly Thursday was on his feet, gently taking his shoulders and resting him up a little higher on the pillows.

“Not too much now,” Thursday said, and he took Morse’s restless hands in his own and sat next to him on the side of the bed. “I’d better call a doctor in to see you, they’ve been hovering around like vultures since we got here.”

Morse looked around the room as if just noticing the unfamiliar surrounds. “Hospital?” he guessed.

Thursday nodded, following his gaze. “Some kind of isolation wing, I think,” he said, wondering seriously for the first time why they’d been brought here. It’s not as if Morse had been contagious, and he’d been asleep most of the time, and fairly quiet when conscious. Well, quiet for someone whose mind was currently suffering through some kind of chemically induced altered state.

“Not yet,” Morse said, his eyes half closing again. He squeezed Thursday’s hands feebly. “Stay with me,” he said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Thursday promised, lifting his hand and depositing a kiss on the rawboned knuckles. 

888

Once Morse was asleep Thursday crept to the door and looked out into the corridor. Strange was sitting in a chair by the door, his back slumped, his head nodding.

“Sergeant?” Thursday murmured, and the younger man instantly snapped to his feet. 

“Is everything okay?”

Thursday smiled. “He woke up. He spoke. He’s going to be fine.”

“Oh, thank god,” Strange said, collapsing back into the chair. 

“You should go home, get some rest,” Thursday said. “You must be exhausted.”

“Between me and Trewlove swapping shifts I got some rest,” Strange said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Mr Bright insisted,” Strange said when Thursday lifted a curious brow. “He wants me to report to him as soon as we have any news.”

“Well you do that and then cut along home,” Thursday advised. “And thank Trewlove for me. We should be all right now.”

“Yes, sir,” Strange said, standing up again and stretching his large form gratefully. “What about you, sir? You’ve been here as long as me. Oh, and Mrs Thursday left you a bag,” Strange remembered, pulling a holdall out from under the chair. “A fresh shirt and shaving gear and so forth.”

“Bless her,” Thursday said. “Tell the nurse at the desk that Morse woke up, will you? Might be a doctor will want to take a look at him.”

888

As it turned out four doctors showed up, including the Home Office pathologist, Max DeBryn.

Fred was in a clean shirt and feeling one hundred percent better after a wash and shave – performed with the bathroom door open so he could keep an eye on Morse the whole time – when the door opened and they all quietly trooped in.

Thursday eyed them askance, and then shot a look at the bed where Morse slept. A lighter sleep this time, from the sound of his breathing, and his eyelids were already fluttering at the quiet click of the door.

“Thursday,” DeBryn said in low tones, taking the inspector’s hand and shaking it. “How are you? How is he?”

“Do there need to be so many of you?” Thursday said. “Uh, hello, Doctor, I’m fine, and Morse is trying to rest.”

“Understood,” DeBryn said, squeezing his hand before releasing it. “But this is all rather urgent I’m afraid.”

“I’m Dr Stoddard,” the oldest man said, reaching out for a hand shake. “These are my colleagues, Dr Singh and Dr Hartnett. Perhaps you’d like to step outside for a few moments?”

Thursday lifted one eyebrow at the suggestion. 

“Perhaps not,” Dr Stoddard said with a smile. 

“I’m trying to sleep here,” came a grumpy voice from the bed, and Thursday forgot the doctors and turned to him, bending over to stroke the hair away from his forehead gently.

“It’s just the doctors, Morse.”

“Well I didn’t think it was the London Philharmonic,” Morse said testily. “Although with the way they’re all yelling it’s certainly as loud as Saturday Night at the Proms.”

“No one’s yelling, Morse,” Thursday said anxiously, casting a look at the doctors.

“It’s all right, Mr Morse,” Dr Singh said in a slightly accented voice. “It’s perfectly normal for your senses to seem hyperactive.”

Thursday relaxed a little. “Because of the drugs, you mean?” he said. “It’ll go away, won’t it?”

The doctors exchanged glances. “We’ll need to do a few tests to make sure the drugs are out of your bloodstream,” Dr Stoddard said. “But before we do that we need to talk to you about a situation that seems to have developed.”

Morse looked at Thursday curiously, and then back at the doctors. “I feel fine,” he said. “A bit muzzy yet, and I’m still thirsty, but otherwise fine.”

“Want some water?” Thursday asked, already pouring some from the jug.

“I’d prefer a beer,” Morse muttered, but he sat up and took the tumbler in only slightly shaky hands. He drank a few sips, then Thursday helped him sit up a little higher, plumping the cushions so they shaped his back.

“What situation?” Thursday said, feeling Morse’s hand slip into his. He squeezed it gently, all his attention on the doctors. 

“Mr Morse,” Stoddard began.

“Just Morse will do.”

Stoddard smiled and nodded. “Morse,” he said again. “I was wondering what you knew of your family history. Particularly pertaining to Sentinels?”

Morse stiffened, and suddenly Thursday felt his hand withdrawing from his own. Morse leaned back against the pillows, and, slightly confused, Thursday stood up, almost physically feeling the rejection from Morse.

“Why do you ask?” Morse said coolly.

“It seems that the overdose you were given has caused you to emerge, Morse,” Stoddard said gently. “We’ll need to do further tests, of course, but at this point we’re reasonably sure that you’re a Sentinel.”

Thursday felt his legs trembling and he took a step back, finding Dr DeBryn at his elbow. The smaller man helped him sit back into the armchair.

Morse’s face had closed up completely, his long russet lashes sweeping down to veil his eyes.

“You knew you were a latent Sentinel?” Stoddard probed.

Morse tightened his jaw, shrugging one shoulder. 

“One of your parents perhaps? Or a grandparent?”

“Perhaps,” was all Morse would say.

Thursday’s head was spinning, the whole world seemed to be unstable under his feet, and he grasped the arms of the chair until his fingers were white. Morse was a Sentinel. It explained so much, so much that Thursday had been ignoring or brushing off for years. The way he’d been instantly drawn to the young man, the protectiveness he’d felt for him, right from the start.

Even the last few days, touching Morse, knowing on some instinctive level that he needed to keep him grounded.

Thursday looked down at his hands, only just realising that he’d been touching Morse in front of these men as if it were the most natural thing in the world. That he'd kissed his hands, as if it were perfectly normal. 

“As to you, Inspector Thursday,” Stoddard was saying. “You’ve always known you’re a Guide?”

Morse’s hands jerked on the sheet they were gripping, but he still didn’t look up, didn’t show any expression on his face.

“We don’t talk about it much,” Thursday said. “I did some work with Sentinels during the war, helping match Guides and Sentinels from different branches of the service.”

Morse finally looked up, his eyes still deliberately blank, but his forehead creased in a curious frown. He always did seem interested in the war stories, Fred recalled.

“But you never found your own Sentinel,” Stoddard said.

“Most don’t,” DeBryn piped up. “There are four or five Guides for every Sentinel who emerges.”

“By the time the war was over I figured I was past that age anyway,” Thursday said, mind still almost a blank. He couldn’t seem to get a handle on what was going on. “Some people said that a whole generation of young Sentinels were lost in the war, and so their Guides would never find them.”

There was silence in the room as everyone there remembered Hitler’s hatred of Sentinels, his determination to wipe them out of Europe along with what he considered the ‘inferior races’. The horrific experiments performed on Sentinels in the Concentration Camps, and on Sentinels taken as POW’s.

Thursday rubbed wearily at his brow, trying to push away the images suddenly crowding his brain. Liberating a prison in Campobasso, only to find it was a concentration camp. As a Guide, to walk into such a place had been especially horrific. The scars had never left him, they throbbed along his senses now.

“Sir?” Morse said, and Thursday looked up to find that the frozen expression on Morse’s face had been replaced by concern. He was trying to twist around, to get out of bed, and Thursday forget his own trembling limbs and leapt up, gratefully taking the hand outstretched to him.

“It’s all right,” Thursday said as he’d said a hundred times over the last few days. 

Morse clutched his hand, peering into his eyes. “I felt… Are you all right?”

“Just tired,” Thursday reassured him.

Thursday glanced at the doctors again, and again caught the significant looks they were giving each other behind his back. 

“Inspector,” Dr DeBryn said gently. “I know you’re tired, and it’s been a stressful few days, but you really need to get your head wrapped around this one pretty quickly. Surely you realise what’s happened here?”

“Morse has emerged,” Thursday said hollowly, gripping Morse’s hand tight. “He’s going to need a Guide.” He broke off, unable to continue. Morse would be getting a Guide, the word was probably already going out to the SGG. Police Guides, military Guides, they’d all be lining up to meet him. 

Thursday was going to lose him.

“Inspector,” DeBryn said, holding up a hand as Stoddard opened his mouth to speak. The pathologist took a step closer and nodded significantly down at his hands, entwined with both of Morse’s now, each gripping the other as if holding on for dear life. “Morse has already found his Guide.”

Thursday looked down at their linked hands and his mind suddenly cleared, as if a stiff wind had skittered down a London street, blowing the fog away before it.

He was Morse’s Guide.

He looked up and met Morse’s stunned gaze with his own, and for a moment he felt something he’d never felt before, except in half remembered dreams where he’d woken up aching and longing for something he’d long ago understood he was to be denied. It was bright, and warm, and it was his, just his, meant and shaped just for him. He reached for it blindly, desperately, giddy with joy…

And then it was gone as Morse once more withdrew from him, pulling his hands away from Thursday’s grasp, leaning away from Thursday where he sat next to him on the bed.

“No,” Morse said, and the fresh, bright hope in Thursday’s heart withered and died.

No, Thursday thought numbly, getting up on shaky legs and stepping away from the bed. This time he barely felt the hands take his elbows, two people this time, one on each side.

I must look like I’m going to fall down, Thursday thought dimly. Morse had turned his back on them all, curled around his pillow as he lay down, shoulder blades like wings against his white vest.

“This must be a great shock to you both,” someone murmured. “Perhaps a bit of time to absorb all these changes.”

No, Thursday thought. Morse had said no. Well of course he’d said no, of course he had. It was madness to even consider such a thing. Morse was young and strong with his whole life ahead of him, Thursday was twenty years his senior, nearing the end of his career. With a wife and family.

A wife, he thought, as the hands kindly guided him out of the room. Into the hall. This was the furthest he’d been from Morse in days and his steps faltered. A wife. He’d barely given Win a thought for days, and surely that’s where these kind hands were leading him now. To Win, who loved him, who would put her arms around him and fill the empty places inside him.

But behind him was a bright thread, connecting him to the slight form in that big bed. Thursday’s arms ached at the memory of holding Morse’s long, lean body against his own, his hands curled into fists at the memory of Morse’s hands reaching for his. If he kept walking now, how thin would that bright thread stretch? How long until it snapped?

But Morse had said no, so Thursday allowed the men flanking him to lead him down the hall and away from his Sentinel.

888

Thursday looked around disinterestedly at the cosy little house he followed Dr DeBryn into. It was decorated in shades of red and brown, frames hung on the walls, paintings of streams and fish. Deep frames with colourful fishing flies in neat rows behind a pane of glass.

“Sit ye down,” DeBryn said cheerfully. “I’ll light a fire, not sure it’s cold enough yet, but you look like you could do with warming through.”

Thursday sat on one of the leather armchairs, feeling the luxurious softness enfold him. He closed his eyes for a moment, longing for the oblivion of sleep.

“Brandy, I think,” DeBryn was saying. “And then I’ll get some food into you.”

Thursday pressed a hand to his stomach at the thought, but accepted the glass pressed into his and knocked it back quickly.

“Oh, dear,” DeBryn said mournfully. “I’m afraid that’s going to hit your empty stomach hard. Perhaps I should have fed you first.”

Thursday held out the glass and with a sigh DeBryn poured in another inch.

“Go easy, Thursday,” he advised. “Unless you want to sleep in that chair tonight. I won’t be able to manage your carcass up my staircase if you pass out.”

Thursday looked around the room again as he sipped the next glass. “Why am I here?” he wondered, hardly caring.

“We thought it best to give you some time away from the hospital,” DeBryn said. “Morse clearly needs time to process, and you must give him that time.”

“What’s to process?” Thursday said. “You heard him. He said no. He doesn’t want me as his Guide, and who could blame him?” Thursday took another sip, feeling the fiery liquid burn its way to his stomach.

“Surely you know it’s not as simple as that,” DeBryn said. “One doesn’t pick and choose one’s Sentinel or Guide as if they were a coat from a Littlewood’s catalogue. You became Morse’s Guide the moment he emerged, and thank god for it.”

“Thank god?” Thursday repeated. “How is this anything to be thankful for? Morse is all alone back there, with no one to look out for him. He’ll find his own Guide, but how are they going to understand him? You know Morse, he can’t do anything the easy way, he’s going to fight this every damn inch. The best Guide in the world won’t understand the way his mind works, how private he is, how closed in. How can you thank god for this disaster?”

“I’m thanking god,” DeBryn said sharply. “Or whatever deity you choose, that you were there for Morse when he was under the influence of the poison that harpy dosed him with. I understand you stopped the ambulance attendants from giving him morphine?”

Thursday frowned, groping for the memory. He rubbed at his forehead tiredly. “He… I… He didn’t need it,” Thursday recalled. “I had him calmed down, he didn’t need anything else.”

“You had him calmed down,” DeBryn said waspishly. “Because he was responding to his Guide. And it wasn’t a matter of him not needing it, your instincts kicked in whether you knew it or not. Do you want me to tell you what would have happened to a newly emerged Sentinel if he’d been injected with a dose of an opiate narcotic while in the middle of a chemically induced psychotic episode?”

Thursday looked at him in dawning horror at the memory of how close he’d come to holding Morse still while that stuff was injected into his body. How the opiate would have slowed down his heart rate, impeded his breathing, gone straight to his nervous system and…

Fred felt the brandy he’d just swallowed burning the back of his throat, and a moment later he was bending over and throwing it up all over the hearth rug. 

“That’s probably my fault,” DeBryn said ruefully.

888

 

“Why did he do it?” Fred said. “Why did he push me away?” He stared moodily down at his hands clenched in front of him on the small kitchen table.

“Who can say? Why has he kept his latent status secret? It wouldn’t have done him any harm as a policeman if it had been in his records. I venture the vendetta that’s been waged against him for the last few years would have had a harder time stalling his career if he’d been under the protection of the SGG. The Guild takes protecting its members very seriously indeed.”

Thursday nodded. Sentinels were rare and prized, and not without good reason. Historically they’d served almost completely in the military, but in this century they’d branched out into the police forces with enormous success. Walking crime labs, some called them. Morse was already a genius at making the kinds of connections that solved complex crimes, and, now Thursday thought about it, how much of what he saw and processed was down to the different way a Sentinel saw the world? Even a latent one.

“I’ve known Morse for nearly as long as you have,” DeBryn said, pushing over a plate of buttered toast and a bowl of soup. “But I venture to say you don’t know much more about his past than I do.”

“I suppose I don’t,” Thursday admitted, tentatively tasting a spoonful of the soup, hoping his stomach wouldn’t reject it, then quickly tucking in as its warm richness reminded him he’d lived on hastily snatched sandwiches for the last few days. 

“So I think we can safely assume that Morse has issues about his Sentinel state.”

“And that’s why he rejected me?” Thursday said, as his heart twisted in remembered pain.

“I don’t think he rejected you,” DeBryn said kindly. 

“Really?” Thursday retorted. “It certainly felt like a rejection from where I was sitting.”

“Oh, it was a rejection,” DeBryn agreed. “But not of you so much, I think, as the whole shebang. Sentinels,” Max continued. “Guides. Everything that goes along with it. He’s been rejecting it for years, perhaps all his life. That’s hardly going to change in an instant.”

“But it’s different now,” Thursday protested. “He’s emerged now, and I’m here and…”

“And?” Max cocked a brow. “And indeed. Look at it from his point of view. He might not have recognised you as a Guide, but he’s always known he’s latent. And he clearly realised right from the start that he could find something in you he’d never found before. Or,” Max said, frowning thoughtfully. “Perhaps he had thought he’d found it before and he was rejected. Hmm.”

Thursday frowned too. “You mean he had another Guide?” he said, clenching his hands on the table.

“He hadn’t emerged,” Max reminded him patently. “He couldn’t have had a Guide as he wasn’t yet a Sentinel. But perhaps he met a Guide and was drawn to him or her, for all the same reasons he was drawn to you. And he or she rejected him.”

“But he can’t think that I’d do that?” Thursday automatically protested, and then he sank back in his seat as his own words rang in his ears. But of course he could think that, couldn’t he? Fred had rejected him on more than one occasion. Pushed him away because he had blamed him for Joan leaving, or because he’d shown his disapproval at some of Thursday’s methods, and his disappointment had cut Thursday deep.

“And then of course,” DeBryn said carefully, watching him from across the table. “There’s your wife.” He blew on his spoonful of soup and swallowed it down. 

Thursday just stared at him, a cold chill under his skin. He realised he hadn’t given Win a thought since the hospital. “What am I going to do?”

“It’s a difficult situation,” Max said sympathetically. “And one that has played out quite often when an unexpected bond has cropped up. It’s why many Guides prefer to remain unattached their whole lives. Hope springs eternal,” he said, with a crooked smile.

“You’re a Guide,” Fred blurted out, and then winced. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Max said amiably. “I am indeed a Guide, and one practically drowning in envy right now. Like you I’d long given up hope of ever finding my Sentinel, and now here you are with a Sentinel like Morse.” He shook his head. “It’s…” He gave his next mouthful of soup an inordinate amount of attention before swallowing it down. “Well, I’m only human,” he said with a shrug.

“You’re the kind of Guide he needs,” Thursday said, looking around the tidy little house. He could see Morse here, sitting in the big leather armchair while his music played. Running long fingers over the spines of shelf after shelf full of books. Leaning back trustingly against Max as he grounded his senses on him, took his hands, turned his head for a kiss…

“You’re going to break that spoon if you’re not careful,” Max pointed out dryly. 

Thursday looked down to see he’d gripped the soup spoon so tightly the graceful floral design on its handle had left a white mark against his skin.

“And I know you’re not trying to be deliberately cruel, but please don’t rub it in. Much as I might wish it, Morse is your Sentinel, and you are his Guide.”

Thursday was mortified, he couldn’t believe he’d said that to an unbonded Guide. Who better than he knew that ache, that emptiness that was never quite filled? He lowered his head in shame.

“Oh, don’t fret,” DeBryn said briskly. “You’re in a state, I know.”

“And you’ve been so kind to me,” Thursday said bleakly. “I ought to be shot. I’m so sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Max murmured. 

There was a long silence as they finished their soup and toast, and Max bustled round and made a fresh pot of tea.

“When I was in Italy, during the war,” Thursday said suddenly. “I was assigned to work with some resistance groups in the mountains. The partisans were tough, but they were hideously outnumbered, and the Nazis had a policy of killing ten Italians for every German soldier slain.” He fiddled with his spoon, suddenly longing for his pipe and tobacco. “I met a woman there, well, a girl really, fighting with a group of about a dozen partisans. She was a latent Sentinel, that was no secret. She was proud of it, defiant about it. The Nazis had orders to take even latents alive to experiment on, so it was an act of amazing courage to be so open about it.”

“Youth,” DeBryn murmured. “We were all so courageous when so young.”

Thursday nodded sadly. “We were just kids,” he said. “It’s only looking back now I realise how young we all were. I was so drawn to her,” he murmured. “I had these dreams. That she’d emerge as a Sentinel, and I’d be her Guide, and we’d win the war together and save the world.”

Max poured him a cup of tea and pushed over the sugar bowl and milk jug. 

“I was already married,” Thursday said starkly. “But I barely gave Win a thought during those long, terrifying, heady days. And when it was all over, and Luisa dead, or at least I believed her dead, I could admit for the first time why I’d rushed into marriage with Win before going back to the war. She was the only one who’d ever come close to filling that empty place inside me. You know the one?” Thursday said.

Max nodded sadly. “I know it.” 

“All these years I’ve taken comfort from her, thought myself lucky. So there was still an empty place, what of it? I was luckier than most Guides, that’s what I told myself. I buried that part of myself and became just another copper.”

“Surely not,” Max murmured. “The true nature of a Guide is never really buried. It’s why so many of us gravitate to medicine, or teaching. Nurturing professions.”

“Not much nurturing in being a policeman,” Thursday said with a half laugh.

“Is there not? Protecting the weak, fighting for justice, turning your back on corruption. I knew you for a Guide the minute I met you, and on some level so did Morse. Although I doubt he admitted it to himself. He’d have run a mile if he had.”

Thursday sat back in his chair with a sigh. “Twenty six years,” he said. “I’ve been using her for twenty six years.”

“That’s a harsh way of looking at it,” Max protested. “You took a chance in finding happiness and you did. Have you been miserably moping all these years?”

Thursday frowned. “Of course not, but -” 

“Have you been a good husband and father?” 

“Yes,” Thursday said. “The best I could be. I see where you’re going with this.”

“You lived your life,” Max said. “That’s all any of us can do. How could you possibly know that a man who would have literally been a toddler when you married would grow up to be your Sentinel? Should you have lived your whole life in hope? A hope the odds tell us are pretty faint?”

“You waited.”

“True, I waited and hoped, as many did,” Max said. “As many do. But if I’d found someone when I was young who filled even a little of that emptiness…” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

“What am I supposed to do now though?” Thursday said bleakly. “Go home after twenty six years and tell her that she’s surplus to requirements? I’ve found my Sentinel now, so I don’t need you any more?”

“Is it a matter of only one or the other?” Max said delicately. “Not all Sentinel Guide bonds are sexual in nature.”

Thursday’s cheeks reddened a little, and Max tilted his head thoughtfully and then nodded. “Well,” he said briskly. “Scotch that thought.”

“If it was just about that I’d swear myself to celibacy tomorrow,” Thursday said, meaning it. “But what am I supposed to do? Bring my bonded Sentinel to my family home? Install him in the spare room? Drag this out while I try to hide from my wife that my whole world now revolves around him? That wouldn’t be fair to any of us, and frankly it just wouldn’t work.”

“You’re thinking a clean break then?” Max said sympathetically.

“I can’t think of anything else,” Thursday admitted. “Even a clean break hurts like hell though.” He ran a hand over his face, exhaustion blurring the edges of his mind. He’d barely allowed himself more than a shallow rest over the last few days, and it was catching up to him now. He shook his head. “Isn’t this all pretty moot anyway?” he said wearily. “Morse said no, and if you think his mind is easily changed, well, you don’t know him at all.”

“My advice is to get a good night’s rest before tackling it,” Max said. “We’ll make up the spare room and I’ll drive you home in the morning. Obviously you and Morse are on leave until this whole thing is sorted out anyway.”

“I should ring Win,” Thursday said reluctantly.

“And say what?” At Thursday’s blank look he stood up, taking his cup and saucer and putting them on the sink. “Come on, you can help me make the spare bed.” 

888

The house was deathly silent as Fred let himself in the front door, and he stood for long moments, hearing the echoes of the last decade in his heart. Footsteps clattering on the stairs, the radio too loud from a teenager’s bedroom, Win greeting him with a kiss, patting his lapel and telling him to come home safe. 

Heavily he hung his coat and hat by the door, and walked into the lounge room.

Win was sitting stiffly in the armchair, before he could speak she was snapping out her own questions.

“Is it true? Is Morse a Sentinel?”

Fred sank down in the seat opposite, legs shaky. “What?”

“I’m no fool, Fred,” Win said sharply. “I took a bag in for you and they directed me to the Isolation Wing. To the Sentinel Ward.”

Fred winced at the stinging tone. 

“No visitors Sergeant Strange said, but you’re in there. You’re in there the whole time. So I’ll ask again and you’ll do me the courtesy of an answer. Is Morse a Sentinel?”

“Yes,” Fred said hoarsely. “He emerged after he was poisoned by a suspect.”

“Poisoned?” Win said, her hands gripping each other tightly. “Is he all right?”

Fred felt a wave of affection for her. How like his Win, even through her anguish to ask after young Morse. Except she wasn’t his Win any more, was she? Grief stricken, he looked down at his hands. “He’s recovering.”

“Is he…” Win took a deep breath. “Is he…”

“He’s my Sentinel,” Fred said, unable to let her continue her stumbling question. “I’m sorry,” he said, as she slumped in her seat like a puppet whose strings had been cut. “I’m so sorry.”

“Are you?” Win said faintly. “Isn’t this what every Guide wants? To find their Sentinel?”

“Once,” Fred admitted. “Once it was all I wanted. But not now, Win, not at my time of life. Not when you need me.”

Win looked up at him, her eyes bitter in her face. “When I need you,” she repeated. “But you don’t need me, do you? Not any more.”

Fred wanted to gather her up, to comfort her, to reassure her that nothing – nothing in this world could separate the two of them. Twenty six years of struggles and hardship, of joy and wonder, two children, a home built on sweat and sacrifice. How could it all be over, just like that? But Fred couldn’t lie to her, not now, not over this. Because it was over, it had been over, although he hadn’t known it, from the moment Morse laid his head on Thursday’s chest and zoned on his heartbeat. 

Maybe, Fred thought dimly, it had been over from the first moment he’d looked into alert, blue-grey eyes. Wide shoulders hunched over the case files of a missing girl.

_“Just us then?”_

“I’m surprised you left him this long,” Win said bitterly. “Come back for your things have you?”

“I suppose I have,” Fred said sadly. 

“Or do you expect me to pack up and go? Leave the field wide open for you then, wouldn’t it? Move him right into my house, my bedroom!” Win broke off as if shocked at her own words and stared at him aghast. “Listen to me,” she whispered. “What am I saying?” She covered her face with her hands and started weeping softly.

“Nothing I don’t deserve,” Fred said heavily, his own eyes burning with unshed tears. 

“No, no,” Win said, shaking her head. “This isn’t your fault, I know that. You couldn’t have known…” She lifted her head and looked him. “You didn’t know, did you? That he was latent?”

Fred shook his head. “It never occurred to me,” he admitted. “I stopped looking for my Sentinel decades ago, love, you know that.” He winced at his pet name for her, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“You were drawn to him though,” she said, wiping at her eyes with the sides of her hands. Fred automatically pulled out his hanky and handed it to her. She took it and dabbed at her eyes. “From the first time you talked about him I could see you’d taken him under your wing. I mean, you were always good to your men, especially the young ones, but Morse was something special.”

“I suppose he was,” Fred said, remembering how much he’d wanted Morse to stay in Oxford, how he’d made promises he hadn’t been able to keep to get him here. “Morse never registered as latent,” Fred said abruptly, wanting her to know. Needing her to know. 

Win blinked in surprise, her lifted hand stilling. “He didn’t?” 

Fred shook his head.

“You really didn’t know?” she said faintly.

“No.”

“But he knew what he was,” Win said, narrowing her tear swollen eyes. “He knew he could emerge at any time. Is that why he was so keen to be your bagman, to stay near you?”

“No, Win, no,” Fred protested, appalled she could think such a thing about Morse. “My Guide status is hardly public knowledge at work. I don’t think it’s ever even been mentioned to me by a superior officer in the years since we left the East End.”

“But Morse could have found out,” Win persisted. “You’ve said before how good a detective he is, how he digs and digs and puts everything together. Has he been scheming behind our backs all this time?”

Fred leaned forward and caught her wildly gesturing hands, stilling them firmly. “Winifred,” he said, looking into her eyes. “Stop, please. Morse is no more to blame for this than I am.”

“But,” Win began fiercely.

“He doesn’t want this,” Fred interrupted her, his voice loud in his ears. “He doesn’t want any of this. Not even me,” he said, feeling again the clutch of emptiness in his gut.

Win stared at him, shocked. “What?”

Fred released her hands and sat back heavily, the weight of his double loss crushing him. “He said no,” Fred told her, rubbing at his face with a shaking hand. “He’s rejected our bond.”

Win sat staring at him, her slim frame stiff. “Can he… Can he do that?”

Fred shrugged miserably. “If anyone can, it’s Morse. No doubt there’ll be a better Guide for him out there. Younger, more compatible. Or maybe he’ll suppress his abilities, it’s been known to happen. Put it all back in the box. Maybe that’s why it took something like this to force him to emerge,” Fred said broodingly. “He’s been keeping himself latent by sheer force of will.” And even after the rejection at the hospital that still stung. 

Win clasped her hands in front of her chest, her eyes welling with tears. “Oh, Fred,” she said. “After you’ve waited all these years.”

“Too many years,” Fred said, unable to take any sympathy, especially not from the woman he’d wronged. He got up and poured them both a stiff drink. 

“It’s nine in the morning,” Win protested automatically, but she accepted the glass and took a sip anyway.

Fred leaned against the wall, lifting the curtain absently and staring out into the street where he’d once lived. How odd, that he already felt almost a stranger in this place. 

“But if he…” Fred turned to look at Win. She was sitting stiffly, staring off into the distance, the drink still in her hand. “If he doesn’t want you,” she said slowly, and Fred winced and took another drink. “Then you don’t have to leave. You can stay, with me.”

“Why would you want me to?” Fred said, aghast. “Whatever Morse chooses to do, I’m his now, I will be for the rest of my life. You deserve better than a man with no heart left to give you.”

“We’ve managed all these years,” Win pointed out.

“That’s not the same,” Fred said, horrified. “I haven’t been cheating you all this time, Win, I swear I haven’t. I loved you, I loved our life. I wanted nothing more from it than to live out the rest of it with you.”

“Oh, Fred,” Win said, her voice heartbroken.

“But I’m not that man any more. My Sentinel…” he took a shuddering breath. “My Sentinel might not want me, but he’s still a part of me. From the moment he emerged – to the sound of my heartbeat,” Fred said fiercely. “I was lost to anyone else.”

Win absorbed his words as if he’d struck her. Eyes wide and shocked, the liquor in her glass roiling as her hands shook. 

“I’m sorry,” Fred said heavily. 

At that moment the telephone rang out shrilly and they both jumped, abruptly propelled back into reality after the almost surreal intensity of their conversation.

They stared at each other for long moments as the phone rang and rang, and finally Win lifted the glass to her lips and sipped, turning her head away from him.

Thursday trod heavily past her and lifted the receiver. “Yes?” he said dully.

“Inspector Thursday? This is Dr Stoddard at the Radcliffe. I’m afraid we have a situation.”

Fred’s frozen heart started beating again, so rapidly he felt momentarily light headed. “Morse?” 

“Morse has entered a fugue state,” Stoddard said. “And we haven’t been able to bring him out of it by normal means.”

Thursday forgot everything else. Morse’s rejection was as meaningless to his Guide instincts as he’d tried to explain to Win. His Sentinel needed him, and nothing on earth would keep him away.

“I’ll be right there,” he said, dropping the phone into the cradle and groping for his hat and coat.

“You’re going then,” Win said dully, and Fred shrugged into his coat and wrenched the door open. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, managing to stop for a moment, even though everything in him was screaming to run, to get to his Sentinel. “I’m so sorry.”

Win only looked at him, then turned away. 

888

“What happened?” Thursday said, grabbing Dr Stoddard by the arm as he met him at the entrance to the Isolation Wing. “What did you do to him?”

Dr Stoddard winced at the tight grip on his firearm, and Thursday let him go with a curse.

“Sorry,” he said. “I need to see him.” He set off down the hall. 

“Of course, Inspector,” Stoddard said. “Just let me fill you in first.” 

Fred stopped outside Sentinel Ward and turned to face him impatiently. “Well?”

“Morse was left to sleep last night, after we all departed. His vitals were being closely monitored, and about 9pm we realised he had slipped into a zone.”

“9pm?” Fred repeated in disbelief. “That’s more than twelve hours ago. Why wasn’t I called?”

“We did everything we could to bring him out of it,” Dr Stoddard said. “But the situation is delicate. Morse is under a great deal of pressure, obviously, but the fact remains that he did indicate he didn’t want your help.”

The reminder was like a slap in the face, but Thursday endured it stoically. “All you had to do was call me to help bring him out of it,” he said woodenly. “It’s his health at stake. For god’s sake, he’s still recovering from being poisoned.”

“Which is why we called you now,” Dr Stoddard pointed out.

Thursday went to push open the Ward door but Dr Stoddard put one restraining hand on his arm. “I’m afraid I can’t leave you alone with him,” he said apologetically. 

Fred nodded tersely and entered the Ward, walking quickly down the hall and pausing for just a moment to gather himself at the door to Morse’s room.

The first sight of his Sentinel almost brought Thursday to his knees. Morse was laid out like a corpse, straight and still on the bed, his chest barely moving.

“Christ,” Thursday said under his breath. He pulled off his hat and dropped it, then shrugged out of his coat, instinct taking over. In an instant his jacket was off, and he laid a hand on Morse’s chest, needing to feel some life, some warmth from his skin. Morse was attached to a machine now, an IV in his arm, leads trailing out from under his hospital gown, a steady beat chiming from a bulky stand by the bed. Thursday felt a slash of resentment. Someone had put Morse into a hospital gown, someone had stuck a needle in his arm. While Thursday had been off brooding and mourning, strangers had handled Morse and now he was laying still as death in the bed that had been so warm and hopeful just the day before.

“Bloody fool,” Thursday muttered, and he wasn’t sure if he was talking about himself or Morse. Morse for doing what he always did, pushing away, shutting down, backing up. Or himself for falling apart at Morse’s instinctive rejection, for letting himself drown in grief. For letting himself leave his Sentinel’s side for a minute.

He turned and pointed at the doctor. “You,” he said fiercely. “Out.”

Dr Stoddard studied him for a moment and Thursday clenched his fists, ready to fight if he had to. But Dr Stoddard merely inclined his head. “I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed,” he said, and closed the door behind him.

“Right,” Thursday said, laying his hand back on Morse’s chest, seeking his heartbeat. He reassured himself for a long moment that it was still beating, closing his eyes, centring himself.

He turned the dial on the IV to the off position, then gently pulled the needle from the IV in Morse’s arm and tossed it over the side of the bed. Using the equipment on the trolley, he pressed a sterile pad to the insertion site and eased the cannula out, figuring the last thing Morse would need when he came out of his zone was the pain of the IV being removed. There was sentinel-safe tape on the tray and Thursday ripped off a few inches and fastened the pad in place.

Thursday then switched off the beeping machine and gently eased away the electrodes from Morse’s skin, carefully slipping down the neck of the loose gown to reach them, and then gently smoothing it back up to Morse’s neck. He pressed his fingers to that fluttering pulse, feeling the chill of Morse’s skin against his steady hands. No hesitation now, no trembling, nothing in his head and heart but his Sentinel, and bringing him out of this zone. “Morse,” he murmured, leaning over and putting his lips to his Sentinel’s ear. “I’m going to bring you out of this and then we’re going to talk, understand me? Really talk for once in your damn fool stubborn life.”

Thursday climbed on the bed and gathered Morse in his arms, easing the younger man down until his tousled head was resting against Thursday’s chest. “Hear my heart beating, Morse,” Thursday said softly. “It’s beating just for you now. You can run from that, and from me, but it won’t change anything. You can lock away who you are and escape into your music and your puzzles, but your Guide will still be out in the world, and his heart will still belong to you.” Fred laid a gentle kiss on russet curls. “Always.”

Long minutes passed and Thursday slipped into a kind of trance. The slow puff of Morse’s breath dampened his vest. He could feel the rise and fall of Morse’s back under his softly stroking hands. Smell the sour, hospital scent of Morse’s hair. Morse shifted his head a little on Thursday’s chest and the Guide smiled and nuzzled the tangled curls. “That’s right,” Thursday murmured. “Listen to my heart beating. It put you into the fugue that kept you alive, it’ll bring you out of this one trying to keep me away.”

“Not,” Morse muttered, and his hands fumbled and clutched at the sheets as he snuffled back to wakefulness. “Ugh,” he said, and Thursday chuckled, Morse’s head lifting and falling as Thursday’s chest rose and fell.

“Serves you right,” he said. “Not what?” 

“Huh?” Morse lifted his head to peer at him in the dim light, then dropped it again as if it were too heavy on his neck. “Not trying to keep you away,” Morse mumbled.

“Just trying to keep me from being your Guide?” Thursday guessed. 

Morse’s head burrowed deeper against him. “Yes,” he said stubbornly.

“Well that’s working,” Thursday said wryly. Morse’s hands slid over the soft sheets and found his chest, tucking his hands under Thursday as if to keep them warm. “How are your senses?” Thursday murmured.

Morse shrugged.

“This is important, Morse. How are your senses? Any spikes, anything feel off? What can you hear?”

“Your heartbeat,” Morse said reluctantly.

“What else?” 

Morse sighed but closed his eyes and concentrated. “It’s quiet here,” he murmured. “Just the air moving as doors open and close. Someone is writing something, I hear their pen scratching on paper.” He frowned a little. “Wiping, like a cloth on metal. A nurse cleaning maybe?” He opened his eyes, blinking a little dazedly. “That was interesting,” he said.

“Could be handy, eh?” Thursday observed. It’d been years since he had worked anywhere near a Sentinel, but he’d seen them operating behind enemy lines in the war, and they’d been unstoppable. 

“How about your sight?” Thursday prompted, and they worked through Morse’s senses as well as they could in the confined space. Afterward Morse wearily laid his head back down on Thursday’s chest, the rest of his body curled up right against him. One hand traced patterns on the side of the cool fabric of the sheet. 

“You left,” Morse said quietly and Thursday shook his head, huffing a rueful laugh. 

“Sorry about that,” he said, trying for sarcastic but not quite making it. 

Morse lifted one bony shoulder in a half shrug. “I didn’t mean you to go,” he said awkwardly.

“You just didn’t want me to stay,” Thursday said, and Morse lifted his head again to look at him. His wide mouth was turned down and he was frowning miserably. 

“We can’t do this,” he said. 

Thursday rubbed his back sympathetically and Morse arched a little into the caress, eyes half closing for a second. “Why not?” Thursday asked, as he should have asked the day before, as he would have asked if he hadn’t felt like he’d been stabbed in the chest.

“You know why.” Morse crossed his arms on Thursday’s chest and rested his chin on them, his eyes never leaving his Guide’s. “It’s impossible.”

“Is it?” Thursday murmured, shaping the back of Morse’s head and carding blunt fingers through soft russet curls. “So what’s happening here then?”

“I don’t know,” Morse said bleakly. “But this is going to turn out to be some huge mistake,” he said, and he unfolded one arm and touched Thursday’s cheek apologetically. “I’m sorry I hurt you though,” he murmured. “I never meant that. I could feel your pain, and then I couldn’t feel anything at all.”

“I shouldn’t have left,” Thursday said. “I’m usually a lot more stubborn than that. I won’t leave again.”

“But you’ll have to,” Morse said, stroking Thursday’s cheek, his sensitive Sentinel fingers smoothing over worn, crinkled skin. “You… you’re…”

“I’m your Guide,” Fred said firmly. “And you’re my Sentinel.”

“But it can’t work,” Morse said, pushing himself up on his arms and looking down at Thursday. “How can it possibly work? Why can’t we just go back to the way things were before?”

“You at your desk right outside my door?” Thursday said. “That felt as if you might as well have been a million miles away?” 

Morse bit his lip.

“Feeling the distance grow between us every day?” Thursday persisted. “Knowing it’s not how it’s meant to be, but unable to stop hurting each other? Because we both knew, even if we didn’t know we knew, that what we had wasn’t enough. But neither of us knew what we could do to stop it all slipping away.”

Tears welled in Morse’s eyes but he didn’t look away from Thursday’s gaze. 

“And all the while that empty place inside getting bigger and deeper and darker,” Thursday said, letting some of his own pain show now. “And finding we can’t fill it with booze or music or sex or anything else. Only feeling alive when we’re together. And that was before you emerged and we bonded.”

“Stop it,” Morse said, pushing further away from Thursday on the bed, staring at him, wet eyes hot. “What’s the point of this? Of any of this? How can you be my Guide? Unless you’re prepared to leave your wife and walk away from your family for the sake of something – “

“I already have,” Thursday interrupted.

“For something that never would have happened if I’d been stronger, smarter, if I’d just put it all together sooner.” He stopped, panting, his chest raising and falling. “What?” he said, staring.

“I’m your Guide,” Thursday said. “Obviously I had to tell Win what was going on.”

Morse was looking at him in genuine horror now. “You…” he stuttered and gulped. “You left Mrs Thursday? How could you do that?”

“Not easily,” Thursday said, pain thrumming through him. Morse’s face softened and automatically he started to reach out to his Guide, but then he abruptly withdrew his hand.

“Is that really what you want to do?” Thursday said, nodding at the hand Morse now held loosely grasped in his other hand. “Let me comfort you but deny me comfort when I’m in pain?”

Now Thursday felt the echo of the pain from Morse’s heart aching in his chest. This time he was the one who reached out and Morse didn’t hesitate, he caught at Thursday’s hand and grasped his fingers desperately.

“Tell me you didn’t really,” Morse pleaded. “You didn’t really leave Mrs Thursday because of me.”

“I left her because of me,” Thursday said squeezing Morse’s chilled fingers. He sat up and pulled the sheet up around Morse’s thin shoulders. “Not everything is your fault, Morse. Not everything is something you can puzzle out and fix.”

“But I told you no,” Morse said. “I rejected our bond. So you could stay with her.”

“It doesn’t work like that. Win and I were over the minute you and I bonded. Maybe even before that,” Fred said honestly. “Although I never would have left her if we hadn’t bonded.”

“But what will she do?” Morse said. “What about –“ 

“That’s not for you to worry about, not right now,” Thursday said. “There’s still a lot to figure out, there’s still a lot ahead of us. But that’s the case no matter what you choose to do.”

Morse looked down at their linked fingers. “What if I wasn’t a Sentinel?” he asked, setting his jaw.

“I’d still be your Guide,” Thursday said patiently.

“Or if I left?” Morse said harshly. 

“Morse?” Thursday said gently. “Look at me.” 

Morse bit his lip but met his gaze, his own face blank. 

“Will you stop thinking about me and Win for a moment, and just think about yourself for a change?” Thursday asked. “Will you please just tell me what you want?”

“I want you to...” 

“No,” Thursday interrupted. “For you. What do you want for yourself? And don’t say you want me to go back to Win, or to go back to things the way they were. Neither is going to happen.”

“Then I don’t know what I want,” Morse said stubbornly. Thursday looked at him for long moments and Morse’s blank face hardened. He folded his arms and sat stiff backed on the bed, long legs crossed in front of him. 

“Do you want to know what I want?” Thursday said, and instantly all Morse’s indignation faded away.

“See?” he said, shoulders slumping. “I’m terrible at this.”

“You’re a quick study,” Thursday murmured. “You’ll learn.”

Morse looked away, his face somber, his eyes bleak. Then he took a deep breath and turned to face him. “What do you want?” 

“I want us to be together. Work together, live together. Love together, if that’s what you want too.”

A flush of red mottled Morse’s pale cheeks. 

“I want to fill that empty space inside us that’s been echoing and aching all our lives,” Thursday said softly. “You and I, made just for each other, although god knows what mischievous bugger decided to make me wait the better part of my lifetime until I found you.”

“Is that really how you feel?” Morse asked disbelievingly. “As if we were…” He stumbled over the words. “Made for one another?”

“Don’t you?” 

“I felt something,” he said, picking at the fabric over his knees, a troubled expression on his face. “Like something reaching out for me… It was too much,” he said.

“Too much?” Thursday said curiously. “Felt just right to me.” 

“But –“ Morse broke off, tilting his head.

“What?” Thursday looked towards the closed door. “What do you hear?” 

“Someone talking about us,” Morse said, narrowing his eyes.

“What are they saying?”

“Am I supposed to be eavesdropping?” 

“Shh,” Thursday said. “You’re missing it. What are they saying?”

Morse eyed him sceptically but tilted his head again. “It’s a man with an accent, he’s talking to another man. Dr Stoddard. I think he was in here with Stoddard yesterday.”

“Go on.”

“He’s saying that Mr Bright wants to come and see us. Dr Stoddard said maybe tomorrow. That we’re…” He trailed away, blushing. “Bonding,” he said faintly.

“Huh,” Thursday said, putting his arms behind his head. “Another day away from work. I’ll have to call Strange later, find out how the interrogation of Emma Carr went. Mr Bright was going to handle it personally, Strange said.”

Morse stared at him and then nodded to the door. “Am I supposed to be doing that?” he asked uneasily. “Eavesdropping on private conversations?”

“It was about us,” Thursday pointed out reasonably. 

“But it was still private,” Morse said. “Didn’t you learn ethics in Guide school?”

“Guide school?” Thursday snorted. “Guide school was a little man coming around to Three Mills Primary school and reading us stories about Sentinels and Guides in history. And in secondary school it was two hours on a Saturday afternoon, that I usually dodged so I could play football with my mates.”

“You never went to Guide school?” Morse asked weakly.

“Everything I know about Sentinels and Guides I learned first hand in the war,” Thursday said. 

Morse still looked dubious. 

“What about you?” Thursday said. “Presumably you didn’t learn anything about being a Sentinel, since you hid the fact you were latent from everyone.”

Morse closed up. 

“All done talking for now eh?” Thursday said. “All right. Reckon I’ll have a kip.” And he closed his eyes and settled back against the pillows.

Morse just sat there for a few minutes, then with a sigh he laid down stiffly next to him. Thursday suppressed a smile as Morse turned his back to him, and then with a rustle of bed clothes turned to face him. 

“This doesn’t mean anything,” Morse muttered, leaning his forehead against the side of Thursday’s shoulder and pressing himself all along him. “I’m just cold.” 

“Want me to get you another blanket?”

Morse was quiet for quite some time and just when Thursday was about to nod off he spoke, his voice so low Thursday had to strain to hear. “It’s not that kind of cold.”

888

A nurse bought them lunch trays and they sat at the table and chairs by the shaded window and ate sandwiches and soup. Thursday watched as Morse’s eyes narrowed in pleasure at the first taste of the broth, and his cheeks flushed as he ate the ham sandwiches that accompanied it.

“How does it all taste now?” Thursday asked curiously, and Morse shrugged.

“Hard to say.”

“Inscrutable bugger,” Thursday said, shaking his head.

There was a folded note and a business card on the tray and Morse scanned it with a frown. “Mr Gilbert Humphries, Master of the Sentinel Guide Guild, seeks an appointment with Sentinel Morse and Guide Thursday at their earliest convenience,” he read, his mouth turning down.

“Master, eh?” Thursday noted, relaxing back in his chair with his tea. “Fancy. They’re pushing out the boat for their newest recruit.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any way to avoid joining the guild, is there?” Morse said hopefully. “I mean, they can’t force us.”

“Do you have any particular objection to the SGG? I found the London branch pretty easy to deal with, during the war.”

Morse shrugged and Thursday wondered what was going on behind that closed expression. Morse seemed keen to reject everything to do with Sentinels, but that was a prejudice he was going to have to get over. Thursday was no expert on Sentinels these days, but he knew they were going to need the guild on their side when it came to fighting for their rights.

“When can we get out of here?” Morse said restlessly, pulling the blind a little to one side and peering out. He winced a little at the light and let it fall back into place. 

“Soon as the doctor clears you, I expect.”

Morse grimaced. “More blood tests,” he said, rubbing at his arm where the IV had been. 

“Is that giving you trouble?” Thursday said, leaning forward. “And don’t just shrug,” he said sharply. “You’re a Sentinel now and pain spikes can spiral out of control suddenly. Do you want to go into a fugue again?”

Morse hunched his shoulders irritably. “It does hurt a bit more than I’d expect,” he muttered reluctantly.

“Right,” Thursday said. “Time to work on some controls.”

“I thought you didn’t have any Guide training,” Morse said, clearly trying to deflect the issue. 

“I worked with enough pairs in the war to know how things work,” Thursday said briskly. “Now, sit down.”

Morse looked at him mutinously for a moment, shoulders still hunched, then slunk over to the chair and sat down.

“Every Sentinel has his own way of controlling his senses,” Thursday said, ignoring Morse’s sulk. “With you I think dials would work best.”

“Dials?” Morse repeated dubiously. 

“Like on your record player. Visualise a series of dials. One for hearing, one for sight, etcetera.”

“Visualise?” Morse said sceptically. “That’s absurd.”

Thursday stared back at him and Morse ducked his head. 

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t try it,” he muttered. “It’s just hard to see how ‘visualising’ something can have any effect on my senses.”

“Is it? They’re your senses, they’re your dials. You need to connect your control to those dials, so that when something seems too loud, too bright, too overwhelming, you can dial it down. The way you would if your music was too loud.”

“And how exactly do I do that? Make that connection?”

“Connections are what you do, Morse,” Thursday said patiently. “Visualising is what you do. All those little pieces of the puzzle, all laid out in front of you. How do you do that? How do you take those pieces and connect them so they fit? So that they make a pattern? A pattern you’re seeing when the rest of us have hardly noticed the pieces.”

Morse was staring at him, his mouth open, a flush of red in his cheeks. “That’s different,” he protested weakly. 

“It’s the same skills. The same big brain you’ve always had. Let’s work on it, shall we? Now, visualise a dial labelled Pain.”

888

Dr Stoddard came to see them after their supper, standing at the foot of the bed and smiling approvingly at them. “I see you’re getting on then,” he observed, lifting Morse’s chart and scanning it. 

“Yes,” Morse said impatiently. “When can we leave?”

“Oh, tomorrow I expect,” Stoddard said absently, making a note on the chart .

Morse sat up straighter in the bed. “Really?” he said hopefully. 

“After you’ve seen the Master,” Stoddard nodded. “I gather he’s in at 10am?”

Morse nodded.

“Then we should have you out of here tomorrow afternoon, all being well.” Stoddard capped his pen and tucked it back into his pocket, tugging his stethoscope from around his neck. “Now, a quick listen to your heart, hmm?”

888

Gilbert Humphrey was a nattily dressed man about Thursday’s age, his eyes a piercing shade of light blue behind horn rim glasses. He introduced himself at the door and shook Morse’s proffered hand, and then looked at Thursday’s outstretched hand quizzically.

He raised a brow and looked from Morse to Thursday.

“Ah,” Thursday said, dropping his hand, a memory sparking.

Morse was bristling. “Excuse me,” he said in an appalled tone. 

“It’s all right, Morse,” Thursday said placatingly. For a man who could be quite brusque at times, Morse set a great store by manners to people he respected. “I just forgot for a moment. As your bonded Guide you have to give permission before anyone can shake my hand.”

Morse stared at him, mouth agape. “Are you joking?”

“It’s a custom, Sentinel Morse,” Humphrey said. 

“Just…” Morse sliced a hand through the air in a dismissive gesture. “Just Morse,” he gritted out. “And it’s a bloody stupid custom,” he said tersely.

“It’s not an insult, Morse,” Thursday said, patting his shoulder. 

“No, no,” Humphrey said, looking alarmed. “The opposite in fact. If you look at the handshaking ritual, it began as a gesture of peace, demonstrating that the right hand held no weapons. It hardly has a place in the modern world, and yet it has become an almost universal custom upon meeting, greeting, parting, offering congratulations. So too has the custom of a Sentinel protecting his Guide to the utmost, by approving who has access to him. It’s a holdover, from an earlier time.”

Morse seemed unconvinced that his Guide hadn’t just been insulted, he had his arms crossed and wore a frown on his face. Thursday sighed inwardly. Not a good start.

They sat by the windows and Humphrey reached into an ancient leather satchel, pulling out a sheaf of papers and booklets. “Now obviously we can’t cover everything today,” he said briskly. “So we’ll start with your most pressing concern. Housing.”

“I have a house,” Morse said. “Well, a flat.”

Humphrey flicked through the paperwork and pulled out some forms. “I think you’ll find, Mr Morse, that your previous housing might not be suitable for a newly emerged Sentinel, especially one who hasn’t even undertaken the most rudimentary training.”

“Will I?” Morse said.

Thursday recognised the mutinous expression on his face, he’d seen it often enough. Usually when facing a superior officer who was patronising him.

“Of course once you’ve undertaken training and your controls are in place, you’ll find it a lot easier to make your living areas Sentinel safe,” Humphrey carried on, obliviously. “Now, we have a property in Jericho that should suit, two bedrooms, all kitted out. I have the keys here.” He groped around in the bottom of the satchel.

“Who exactly is paying for this?” Morse asked sharply. “I can’t afford a second rent, not on a constable’s wages.”

Humphrey blinked at him, a little nonplussed. “Leaving aside your rank for the moment,” he said. “Obviously the SGG will cover the costs of your training and accomodation during this transition period.”

“Why?” Morse said, as if he was questioning a suspect. “What’s in it for them?”

“Well, the membership fees paid to the SGG aren’t just so we can maintain our premises and throw banquets,” Humphrey said, smiling a little. “We exist to help Sentinels and Guides, Mr Morse. That’s why the Guild was formed 800 years ago, and why it’s one of only a handful of guilds still in existence today.”

“So we pay these membership fees?” Morse pounced.

Humphrey shook his head. “As servants of the Crown all your costs regarding the SGG are met by your employers,” Humphrey explained. “Serving police officers, military, the handful of Sentinels branching out into diagnostic and surgical work within the field of medicine. All are covered.”

Morse leaned forward. “And what’s in it for them then? Our employers?”

“Sentinel Guide pairs are an asset to the nation, Mr Morse,” Humphrey said, a little bewildered now. He looked at Thursday, who shrugged. Morse was a grown man, he had the right to ask anything he liked.

“You mean a commodity, don’t you?” Morse said. “Is it true that Sentinel Guide pairs were dropped behind enemy lines in the war as assassins?”

Humphrey blinked, as if just realising Morse’s belligerence. “Well, I wouldn’t say assassins,” he said carefully.

“I don’t know what else you’d call it,” Morse said impatiently. “And isn’t it true that in America they’ve developed tests to find latent Sentinels? That young Sentinels are being removed from their families under one pretext or another and forced into the military?”

“I can hardly speak for the United States,” Humphrey said defensively. “But if you’re aware of these allegations you’re also aware that Great Britain has condemned these actions in the harshest terms at the United Nations. The SGG does not and will never support separating Sentinels from their families.”

Thursday leaned forward warily, feeling the thrum of rage and fear from Morse through their bond. For the first time he was getting a real sense of Morse’s feelings about his Sentinel state, and it was probably more revealing than Morse would be comfortable with.

“Do you deny that the SGG is developing its own testing regimen, with the eager help of the government, to locate latent Sentinels in schools?” Morse asked.

Humphrey spread his hands. “To help them,” he protested. “So that potential Sentinels can learn what it is to be a Sentinel, and how to cope should their senses emerge.”

“To be indoctrinated you mean,” Morse bit out. “You’d think with the lessons of the war still sharp in people’s memories that they’d have more sense, wouldn’t you? What do you think Hitler would have done if he’d had the technology to find latent Sentinels in their cradles?”

Humphrey rubbed a hand on his brow and Thursday decided it was probably time to call a halt to this. Morse might be the newest star on the Sentinel horizon, but this was the Master of the SGG he was interrogating like a common criminal.

“All right, Morse,” he said firmly. “Settle down. Mr Humphrey isn’t to blame for all the ills in the world befalling Sentinels. He’s on our side in this, aren’t you, Mr Humphrey?”

The Master looked at him gratefully, pulling out a large white hanky and mopping at his forehead. “Of course I am,” he said shakily. “The SGG has no hidden agenda, the safety and security of Sentinels and Guides in our care is our only concern.”

Morse still looked as if he wanted to argue, but Thursday glared at him sternly and he subsided, long trained in obeying his Inspector. 

Humphrey replaced his hanky in his pocket and sat forward in his seat, looking at Morse earnestly. “I assure you, Mr Morse, that the SGG does not view you as a commodity. The rights and privileges Sentinels enjoy are well earned by their services to a grateful nation, but were fought for by the Guild. We still fight every day to preserve those rights.”

Morse had the grace to flush a little. “I apologise,” he said stiffly.

“Of course you do,” Thursday said, trying to smooth over the troubled waters. “I’m sure you understand, Mr Humphrey, that this has all come as a bit of a shock, to both of us.”

Mr Humphrey seemed satisfied with the apology and he sat back in his chair with a sigh. “Completely understandable,” he said kindly. “I’ve only had the chance for the most cursory glance at your files, but I understand the situation is a difficult one. The difference in your ages for one thing,” he said delicately. “In the vast majority of pairings the Sentinel and Guide are either close in age or the Sentinel is the senior.” He looked at Morse’s defensive body language and lifted a brow. “Perhaps nature knows best after all,” he murmured. “Mr Morse might need the reassurance of an older Guide, considering his… concerns about his new status.”

Morse rolled his eyes but forbore comment.

Humphrey again groped in his bag, finally pulling out a set of keys with a buff cardboard label attached by a piece of twine. He laid it on the table and flipped through the formidable stack of paperwork in front of him.

“Now, Guide Thursday… Do you prefer Inspector Thursday?” 

“Just Thursday will do.”

“Well then, Mr Thursday.” Humphrey’s face grew sympathetic. “I understand your situation is particularly difficult,” he said soberly. “That you are in fact a married man?”

Thursday clenched his hands together in his lap, suddenly longing for his pipe. He felt Morse’s anxious glance on him, felt a thrum of concern through their bond.

“I have some phone numbers here that may prove usual,” Humphrey said, laying a stapled set of papers in front of him. “Dissolving a marriage due to an unexpected bonding is never easy, and there are counsellors available for you and your family to help you cope in this difficult time.”

Thursday looked numbly at the neatly typed sheets.

“Legal aid is also available,” Humphrey continued, seemingly oblivious to the atmosphere. “The law is quite clear on the subject, and no opprobrium is attached to a couple forced to dissolve their union through no fault of their own.”

“Excuse me,” Morse interrupted, standing abruptly.

Humphrey blinked behind his glasses, looking up at him.

“I’m a bit tired,” Morse said firmly. “I need to rest or they won’t release me today.”

Thursday just sat wearily as Morse took Mr Humphrey’s arm and handed him his satchel. “We really appreciate all your help,” he was saying as he hustled him to the door. “Thank you for the keys and the information.”

“Oh, well, of course,” Humphrey said, accepting his case and holding it to his chest. “We’ll meet again, obviously, when you’re settled. To discuss your training and so forth.”

“Looking forward to it,” Morse said, pulling open the door.

“Yes, well.” Humphrey stepped into the hall. “There’s a number in the paperwork to call for a car service,” he said hurriedly, as if just remembering. “Please phone to arrange a time for them to pick you up and take you to your temporary accommodation.”

“We will,” Morse said, smiling insincerely. “Please tell the Ward Sister we don’t wish to be disturbed, will you?” And with that he shut the door in Humphrey’s face.

Thursday thought he probably should have objected to Morse giving the Master of the SGG what amounted to a bum’s rush out of the door, but he found he couldn’t muster the energy.

He felt as if he’d been blindsided by the reminder of everything he’d been putting out of his mind while he cared for his Sentinel. Counsellors, legal aid. Sterile bandages slapped over gaping wounds. Win’s devastated face. Sam would be angry and bewildered. Joan… Where was Joan? He’d been so angry at her for running away when her family needed her, and now look. He was the one abandoning them. A warm weight enveloped him, and long lean arms wrapped around him. Morse was on his lap, drawing Thursday’s aching head onto his shoulder, one hand carding through his hair and curving around the back of his head.

“Don’t, don’t,” he was pleading, and Thursday gave into his grief and clutched him hard, wrapping his arms around Morse’s lean torso, burying his face in Morse’s throat. Eventually Thursday’s tide of guilt and anguish receded, and he felt the return of life to his limbs. Morse was still on his lap, the whole of his left side pressed against Thursday, his arms relaxing a little now as Thursday stirred back to life.

“I’m sorry,” Thursday said hoarsely. “You must have felt some of that through the bond.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Morse said fiercely. “I’d take it all away from you if I could.”

“It’s not all on you, Morse,” Thursday reminded him, and Morse pulled back a little stiffly.

“Isn’t it?” he said quietly.

Thursday’s coppering instincts stirred. “You knew you were latent when you joined the force, didn’t you?”

Morse was still for long moments before stiffly nodding. 

“Did you know I was a Guide when you met me?” Thursday probed.

Wide eyes met his for a moment and then darted away.

“You did,” Thursday said heavily.

“Not for sure, no,” Morse blurted. 

“But you suspected.”

Morse’s gaze was troubled. “I should have left. As soon as I met your family I should have packed up and disappeared. But I didn’t know you could be my Guide, how could I know?” Morse said looking bewildered. “I thought I’d found my Guide and lost her, years ago.”

Thursday stared at him in shock. “You what?”

Morse groped for words, still looking confused. “I loved a girl,” he said. “And I thought she loved me. I knew she was a Guide, but she always said she didn’t want a Sentinel, thought that being bonded was a trap, and she wanted no part of it.”

Thursday frowned, such thinking beyond his understanding.

“But I felt the same way,” Morse defended. “I wanted no part of all that, and I told myself that justified lying to her by omission.”

“You didn’t tell her you were latent.” 

Morse looked miserable. “I was afraid to lose her, told myself it didn’t matter, since I would never emerge anyway.”

“So what happened? She find out?”

Morse shook his head. “She’d been in love before, fell for me on the rebound, I see that now. In our third year she told me she didn’t love me, broke our engagement. I went a little mad,” Morse said, shaking his head. “And I told her everything.”

“She didn’t take it well?”

“She was horrified,” Morse whispered. “Frantic with it. She told me I had to leave, get out of Oxford, never come back. What if I emerged, she said. She’d be forced to bond with a man she hated, and she’d lose the man she loved.”

Thursday thought she sounded like a silly, immature little twit, but he kept that to himself for the moment. “So you left,” he said. “Dropped out, lost your degree, left your home.”

“None of that mattered next to losing her,” Morse said. “I think now…” He hunched his shoulders guiltily. “I think now I did want to emerge, if she would be my Guide. I think I wanted her to fill that empty place inside me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Thursday said. “That’s what we all want, really.”

“She didn’t.”

“I wonder,” Thursday said. “You thought you didn’t either, once.” Something occurred to him as the pieces fell into place. “You thought I was safe,” he said.

Morse jerked guiltily. 

“You thought you could take comfort from me without any danger of emerging, or ruining my life.”

“If I’d thought for a moment that you could be my Guide,” Morse said earnestly. “I swear I would have left. I knew I was using you, but I thought it wasn’t harming anyone but me. I would have left, no matter how much it hurt, rather than destroy your home.”

Thursday turned it all over in his mind, believing Morse absolutely. After all, isn’t that what he’d already done once? Leave what he thought was his destined Guide, because she asked him to? And she’d been a woman he loved. “I believe you,” Thursday said, and Morse’s shoulders sagged in relief. Thursday realised that Morse had really thought he might not. “Of course I believe you,” he said. “And I don’t know why Mother Nature decided to fly in the face of common sense and make us destined for each other, but for all that, I’m not sorry you stayed, Morse. Not sorry at all.”

“But you’ve lost so much,” Morse said. 

“But I have you. Us. This.” He put his hand over his heart, and Morse automatically lifted his own hand and placed it over his own heart. “I wish we hadn’t hurt so many people by finding each other,” Thursday said roughly. “But there was no help for it, and no malice from either of us. It happened, we found each other, and I can’t regret it. I won’t.”

Morse looked down at the hand he held over his heart, and then wrapped his other arm around Thursday and held him close. “It seems so selfish of me,” Morse confessed. “But I can’t regret it if you don’t.”

888

Thursday helped Morse up and back to the wide bed, then he kicked off his shoes and joined him, laying down with his weary head on the cool pillow. Morning sun still slanted gently around the edges of the blind, and the Sentinel Ward was as deathly quiet as always.

“Without opprobrium,” Morse said suddenly. “That’s what they said to my mother, when my father left us. I remember, I was only nine and I had to look the word up. They gave her a small pension too, a pittance really. As if that made up for losing her husband.”

Thursday listened, looking up at the white ceiling. 

“She didn’t know he was latent when she married him,” Morse said quietly. “I think he knew that she might not have accepted him if she’d known. Quakers believe utterly in non violence, and Sentinels were very much seen as weapons in the hands of military forces.” Morse fumbled a little by his side and Thursday found his hand being held. He squeezed a little, to let Morse know his touch was welcome. “He met his Guide when I was nine, and I later found out it wasn’t by chance. He’d registered with the SGG and was going to meetings arranged for latents and Guides.”

Thursday absorbed this. He understood, none better, that need for a Guide that was soul deep. But the kind of betrayal towards an innocent that Morse was describing was an anathema to him.

“She didn’t hate him,” Morse said softly. “I don’t think she was capable of hatred. But she blamed him very much for the way it all happened. She used to pray that I wouldn’t be like him. That I wouldn’t be afflicted.” Thursday flinched. Abandoned by a Sentinel father, his beloved mother seeing Sentinels as an affliction. No wonder Morse had denied and hidden his status. “He didn’t serve in the military afterwards. He’d been injured early in the war, shrapnel in his chest, so his lungs weren’t A1. They had him doing surveillance work for visiting VIPs, posing as a driver.”

Thursday absorbed all this as Morse grew quiet again. “So that’s why you weren’t registered as latent when you were born?” 

“He could hardly do that when he hadn’t even told her he was latent. Perhaps he had given up hope of emerging when he married her. Perhaps he just didn’t care.”

Thursday stroked Morse’s hand with his thumb, glad of that small point of connection between them as old pain thrummed along their bond. 

“After she died I came to live with them, my father and his Guide. He’d married her as soon as the divorce was final. Gwen,” Morse said, his voice taking on that even tone it got when he was trying not to show any emotions. “She hated me. I was a reminder, I suppose, that her Sentinel had once loved someone else.”

Selfish cow, Thursday thought. What kind of Guide didn’t care for their Sentinel’s offspring? If Morse had children Fred knew he’d have been delighted to take them into his heart and his life. 

“I have my mother’s colouring. Her hair, her eyes. I used to wish I didn’t, then maybe my father would have liked me more. Sometimes it was as though he could barely stand to look at me. Then later I was fiercely glad I didn’t look like him. Then maybe I wouldn’t grow up to be like him.”

“A Sentinel?”

“Selfish,” Morse corrected. “Deceitful. Cruel.”

“I don’t think it was dislike that he felt towards you, Morse,” Thursday said thoughtfully. “I think it was guilt. He loved your mother but deliberately deceived and then betrayed her. I understand why he sought his Guide, although I could never condone how he went about it. But maybe he felt some measure of guilt when he looked at you and saw her.”

Morse turned on his side and looked at him. “Guilt? Do you think so?”

“I do. As for the rest, well, you’re nothing like him. You’re not selfish or cruel, or a liar either come to that. Learning a few more polite lies might have been a handy skill for you actually, career wise.”

Morse ignored this, frowning thoughtfully, and heaving a sigh Thursday rolled until they were facing each other on their sides. 

“What are you thinking in that big brain of yours?”

“I don’t feel as if I’m any better than him. I lied to Susan and drove her away. I should have known there was a risk when I realised how drawn I was to you. I stayed when I should have left. How does that make me any better than him?”

Thursday lifted a hand and cupped Morse’s lean cheek, stroking a thumb under his eye, smoothing the soft skin. “You always do this,” he said fondly. “Always think everything is your fault, your responsibility. Doesn’t it occur to you that I should have been asking myself some hard questions? Some part of me knew that what I felt for you, right from the first, was different. Special.”

“But I’m the one who hid his status,” Morse said stubbornly. 

“Do you really think you would have stayed latent all your life? If not for that poison?”

Morse nodded. “If sheer will alone has the power to keep Sentinel abilities from emerging,” he said in a hard voice. “Then I would have.”

“Maybe it does,” Thursday mused. “There are stories of Sentinels who suppressed their abilities even after they’d emerged. Don’t get any ideas,” Thursday warned as Morse stiffened. “Because that would be selfish. You might be able to go back, but I wouldn’t. All you’d be doing is leaving me alone.”

Morse stared at him, then lifted his hand and cupped Thursday’s cheek. “I won’t leave you alone,” he promised huskily, and he drew closer, until their foreheads gently met, and they were gazing in each other’s eyes.

And Fred felt it again, as he had days before, bright, and warm, and it was his, just his, meant and shaped just for him. It was there, just beyond him, but he didn’t dare reach for it again, not when the bruise of its withdrawal last time still throbbed in his soul.

But then it reached out for him, and it was Morse, everything that made Morse Morse. All his courage and his heart and his complex, tangled mind, and his music and his beloved books. And he fitted exactly into the Morse-shaped place inside Fred that had echoed with loneliness and emptiness all his life.

Now Fred could reach out again and he did so joyfully, lovingly, pouring everything he was into Morse, his courage and his heart and his sense of justice and his belief in the power of good over evil. And it fitted perfectly into the Thursday-shaped place inside Morse.

Through their bond thrummed pleasure, joy, complete fulfilment, and as naturally as breathing their lips found each other, and they kissed, celebrating the bond between them as complete.

And after that the was no more talk of regret. 

888

The driver was arranged for half past two, and by two Morse and Thursday were dressed and seated by the window, looking through the paperwork Mr Humphrey had left them to look through.

“I’m too old to go back to school,” Thursday grumbled. “Lessons, at my time of life.”

“It doesn’t look too complicated,” Morse said, flipping through a thick handbook. “Mostly what we’ve been doing. Learning basic controls, grounding exercises, communication.”

“Easy for you to say, you’ll learn this stuff standing on your head.”

“It’s mostly common sense anyway,” Morse said. “The biggest problem most pairings have is finding a way to work together. That won’t be a problem for us.” He tilted his head, his eyes blurring for a minute. “Mr Bright and Constable Trewlove are here,” he said, running his hand over his hair and checking the buttons on his jacket.

“Good,” Thursday said, going to the door to meet him. “I’m desperate to know what’s going on at the nick.” 

He opened the door just as Mr Bright had raised his hand to knock, and the Chief Inspector looked taken aback for a moment, and then smiled appreciatively. “Very good,” he said. “Learning those skills already, eh?” He nodded for Trewlove to proceed him into the room. “Constable.”

She accepted his gentlemanly gesture with one of her cheerful smiles. “Sir.”

“Well, well,” Bright said jovially. “I see you’re all ready for the off. SGG have you all squared away?”

“Temporary accomodation, sir,” Thursday said, in the politely respectful tone he reserved for superior officers. “Short term only, I’m sure. We’re champing at the bit to get back to work.”

“Capital,” Bright said. “Morse.” He nodded at the younger detective. “Good to see you back up on your feet. Thank goodness that the dose you were given was a less lethal batch than that administered to Nick Wilding.”

“He’s dead then?” Thursday said soberly as Morse looked on, eyes wide.

“As good as,” Mr Bright said. “Completely doolally and likely to be for life, say the quacks. Terrible business all around, but a good result with the arrest.”

“She’s confessed then, sir?” Morse asked.

“To the whole thing. Sent the chocolates to Mrs Pettybon to get back at her for threatening to get the groups record banned. Planted the photos you found in the Turkish Delight box to discredit Wilding. And of course, the murder that started the whole investigation was her doing.”

“Her lawyer is pleading diminished responsibility,” Trewlove added.

“Crazy as a loon,” Bright said. “But she’ll never see the light of day again. Well, I can see you’re ready to go, we won’t keep you. Just wanted to give you this.” He nodded at Trewlove, who smiled and pulled a leather folder from her bag and handed it to Morse.

Morse glanced at Thursday in surprise, then flipped it open to reveal an ID and warrant card.

“Congratulations Detective Sergeant Morse,” Bright said. “It’s long overdue.”

“I don’t understand,” Morse said, looking dazed. “Why? My exam paper went missing.”

“Damnedest thing,” Bright said, eyes twinkling. “The SGG requested your files, yours and Inspector Thursday’s, a request we happily granted. Next thing there’s a delegation of SGG lawyers at Division, demanding a full investigation into the circumstances regarding your automatic failure due to a missing examination paper.”

Thursday smiled in satisfaction as Morse just stared at Bright, mouth open in shock, eyes wide.

“Wouldn’t you know it, within two hours your missing examination paper had shown up. Misfiled apparently.”

“You set a record,” Trewlove interjected as if she couldn’t help it. “A near perfect score.”

Morse frowned. “Near perfect?” he said vexedly.

Thursday laughed out loud and Constable Trewlove put her hand to her mouth and giggled. 

“As a Sentinel you would have been given rank anyway,” Bright said. “But this way’s better, what?”

“Yes, sir,” Morse said, closing the warrant card and tucking it into his jacket pocket. 

“Thursday? A word before we go? Constable, if you wouldn’t mind keeping Sergeant Morse company for a moment?”

888

The flat was on ground level, spotless clean, and had double glass doors that led out onto a small walled garden. “All the mod cons,” Thursday commented, opening the shiny little refrigerator. The empty, shiny little refrigerator. “I don’t suppose you can cook?” Thursday said hopefully.

Morse was glancing with disdain over the contents of the modern glass bookcase. “Does warming beans and burning toast count?”

“We might be in trouble on that score,” Thursday muttered.

“We’ll survive,” Morse said, looking askance at the television set. “I could smell fried batter, potatoes and extremely old grease as we walked up the path.”

“Fish and chips,” Thursday deduced gleefully. “Right, you set the table, I’ll use my brilliant powers of deduction to track the chippy down.”

Morse turned and stared at him. “I’m coming too.”

“No, you’re not,” Thursday said, checking his wallet. “That little patch of grass out there is the closest you’re getting to the outside world until you have all your senses completely under control.”

“I’m fine,” Morse protested. 

“You’ve been fine in an isolation wing and a luxury sedan,” Thursday said. He softened his tone. “Don’t rush it, Morse. We’ll have plenty of time to get all your controls in place. You’re only just out of hospital.”

“Fine,” Morse said with ill grace. “But don’t stop at a pub unless it’s to buy a couple of bottles to bring home.” He pointed at Thursday and narrowed his eyes. “I’ll know if you’ve been drinking without me,” he said, and with a smirk he stalked into the kitchen and began banging plates. 

Thursday rolled his eyes, but wisely passed the pub on the corner and nipped into an off licence instead and picked up a couple of bottles of ale. 

888

Thursday decided he could watch Morse eat fish and chips all day. At the first crunch of yellow, greasy batter, Morse closed his eyes in ecstasy , as if he were tasting ambrosia instead of a piece of deep fried cod.

“Oh, my god,” Morse moaned, munching on a chip. “Oh, my god.”

“Shall I leave you and your supper alone?” Thursday said, sprinkling vinegar over his hot chips. Even he could smell that sharp tang, but Morse’s nostrils flared and he breathed in so deeply he started to cough.

“Careful,” Thursday said, alarmed. “We’ll look a right pair of narners if you choke to death on your first meal out of hospital.”

“The vinegar,” Morse wheezed, eyes watering. His appetite was unaffected though, he powered through his fish and chips, devoured two slices of buttered bread, and was eyeing the remaining chips on Thursday’s portion before the older man threw up one protective arm around it.

“Forget it,” Thursday said. “No greater love does a Guide have for his Sentinel, but you’re not getting your hands on my chips.”

Morse leaned back in his chair, hands on his lean belly. “I’m stuffed,” he said in surprise. “I don’t remember the last time I ate so much.” He looked at the jar of pickled onions thoughtfully, and Thursday nudged them away. 

“I don’t think so,” Thursday said. “Not if just the smell of vinegar made you choke.”

“We’ll add that to my list of goals,” Morse said, drinking his ale with pleasure. “I’ll know I’m fit for duty when I can eat a pickled onion without dying.”

888

“I’ve got to call home,” Thursday said. “I mean Win. See how she’s doing.”

Morse got up. “I’ll go sit in the garden,” he offered.

“Just don’t concentrate on anything too hard,” Thursday said, trying not to fuss. “And don’t pick any flowers, we don’t know what might affect your skin now. And don’t…”

“Make your call,” Morse interrupted. “I’ll be fine.”

Thursday dialled the familiar number with trepidation. He wanted to hear Win’s voice, make sure she was all right, but at the same time he dreaded hearing her misery and bitterness again. 

Win’s voice down the line was cautious. “Hello?”

“Win? It’s Fred.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Win said, her voice brightening. “I thought it was the papers again.”

Thursday blinked in surprise. Not the greeting he’d been expecting. Before he could speak Win was rushing on.

“Oh, Fred,” she said happily. “It’s our Joan, she’s come home.”

Thursday sat down on the couch, his legs weak. “Joan?”

“She read all about it in the paper and jumped on the first bus. She was only staying in Leamington, if you can believe it. I thought her off to London at least. But she’s fine, and we had a good chat and a bit of a cry and she says she’s staying until things are more settled. Oh, Fred, I’m that relieved.”

“Me too,” Thursday said, trying to get a word in edgewise. “Is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” Win said. “Like I said, things were a bit emotional, but she says she just needed some time to get her head together, whatever that means. I have to say though, if she hadn’t read about this mess in the paper, I don’t know when she might have come back, if at all.”

“What paper?” Thursday said. 

Win was quiet for a moment. “Haven’t you seen the Mail?” she said, her tone surprised. “Day before yesterday, the whole front page. About you and… well, about you and this whole business.”

“I had no idea,” Thursday said, once again feeling cut off from the real world.

“Mr Bright called by and he insisted on putting a constable out front, since the reporters kept knocking on the door and trying to ask questions. Some of them from London.”

I should be there, Fred thought, and then squashed the thought. If he was there none of this would be happening. “Can I talk to Joan?” he asked, and again there was silence down the line. “I’m sorry, Fred,” Win said, and she did sound genuinely sorry. “She says she’s just not ready to talk to you yet.”

Fred rubbed his chest at the pain, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “It’s all right,” he said. “You tell her it’s all right. We can talk when she’s ready. I’m glad she’s home.”

“I will,” Win said, her voice softening, and Thursday felt a prickle of tears behind his eyes. “I’ll tell her you love her, shall I?”

Fred nodded, then realised she couldn’t see him. “Yes,” he managed. “Tell her that.”

888

He found Morse in the garden, sitting on a white stone bench in the shade, one hand rubbing at his chest. Silently Morse held out his other hand and Thursday sat next to him, gripping it hard. 

They sat there together as the quiet summer evening drew in and the shadows grew long, but they didn’t speak. What was there to say?

888

Morse looked up from the book he was desultorily flipping through at half past six. “Strange is here,” he said, looking curious. And then his eyes lit up. “He’s brought food.”

He raced to the door and there was Sergeant Strange, big and burly and laden with a cardboard box. Morse took it from his bemused hands and bore it off to the small kitchen.

“Evening, Sergeant,” Thursday’s said, smiling for the first time in hours. “Sorry about that, Morse has become a bit obsessed with his food lately. Extra sensitive tastebuds,” he explained.

Strange’s eyes rounded. “Oh, I never thought of that.”

“I’m guessing we’re going to have to take all his pants out at the waist within a week at this rate,” Thursday continued.

“Steak and kidney!” Morse said joyously from the kitchen.

“My mum, sir,” Strange explained, looking a little embarrassed. “She said two blokes couldn’t do for themselves, and that you’d be living on egg and chips. So she made you up a nice big dish.”

“I quite favour egg and chips, Sergeant,” Thursday said. “But thank her kindly for us, will you? You’ve made my Sentinel’s day.”

“And the surprises aren’t over yet,” Strange said. “Will you help me with some things from the car, sir?”

By the time they got back into the kitchen Morse had a spoon out and was halfway through a huge helping of still warm steak and kidney pud. He looked up a bit guiltily. “There’s plenty left,” he said defensively.

“Just as well,” Thursday said. “But if you can spare a moment from your indulgence in one of the Seven Deadly Sins, Strange has brought your record player and albums.”

Morse dropped the spoon on the table with a clatter.

“Also some books,” Strange was saying, but Morse was already past him and into the lounge room, dropping easily to his knees by the boxes in a manner Thursday envied.

“Strange, you’re a life saver,” he said fervently. He picked up his record player and literally hugged it. 

“It was Mr Bright’s idea actually,” Strange explained over a beer as Morse set up his record player and fussed over which album to put on. “We had to pack up all your stuff, Morse, as there were reporters everywhere, and Mr Bright was worried they might get into your place and paw through your things. I supervised it myself,” Strange assured him when Morse looked over at him anxiously.

“And Mrs Thursday packed a few bags for you, sir,” Strange said, looking down and avoiding the Inspector’s eyes. “Clothes and so forth.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Thursday said, keeping his voice even. Now he felt Morse’s worried glance on him, but there was nothing he could do about the way he was feeling. He sipped at his ale. 

Morse finally found a record he liked, and within moments the sweeping overture filled the room. Morse tilted his head and twiddled with the knob until the sound suited him, then sprawled back on the couch and reached for his beer.

“You’ve heard about the newspaper story?” Strange asked Thursday quietly. 

Thursday nodded. “It’s a storm in a teacup,” he predicted. “Something new will come along soon enough. Probably already has.”

Strange looked doubtful but didn’t argue. “Mr Bright is pleased as Punch anyway,” he continued. “It’s a feather in his cap and no mistake, having a Sentinel Guide pair at his nick.”

“Division might have something to say about it though,” Thursday said worriedly. “Happen they might think we should be working somewhere a bit more high profile.”

“They’re in for a disappointment then, aren’t they?” Morse said from the couch, and Strange looked startled for a moment, then embarrassed as he realised that Morse could of course follow the conversation easily from the other side of the room, even with the music playing.

“The man from the SGG filled us in on all that,” Strange said. “He said that Oxford was Morse’s territory and it would be his decision as to whether that changed.”

“Territory?” Morse snorted and crossed the room to sit at the table, refilling his glass. “What nonsense.”

Strange assumed a wise expression. “He said that a Sentinel’s territory could be as small as one street, or as big as a city.”

“And did he say whether I’m supposed to be peeing on trees to mark that territory?” Morse said sarcastically. 

Strange grinned. “I think that’s a personal choice, matey.”

888

Thursday shifted to the couch after Strange left and Morse closed the front door and wandered over, standing a little uncertainly. Fred lifted one arm invitingly and Morse quickly tucked himself next to him and they sat for a while in comfortable silence.

“You all right?” Morse said quietly.

“Getting there,” Fred said, and Morse must have read from his face that he didn’t want to speak about it. He leaned his head on Thursday’s shoulder and half closed his eyes, listening to the music soaring in the background.

“L’elisir d’amore,” Morse murmured as the tenor sang of a secret tear. “Where a man spends all his money on what he thinks is a love potion, only to be cheated and sold cheap wine instead.”

“Don’t see the point of a love potion,” Thursday said, puffing at his pipe, content to put the sorrow away and feel his Sentinel pressed against him. “What happens when it wears off?” They listened until the song ended and another happier one took its place. 

“Yesterday,” Morse said quietly. “What was that?”

Thursday understood instantly what he meant. “The bond. Settling I suppose.”

“But we were bonded already,” Morse said curiously. “What does that mean, settling?”

Thursday shrugged. “Just what it sounds like. The bond is new, and we’re still adjusting to it. Yesterday just completed it. Or maybe it was the beginning of completing it.”

“I can’t imagine it being much more complete than that,” Morse mused.

Thursday smiled and kissed his head, feeling his heart easing in his chest. “Me either,” he agreed.

Morse laid his hand on Thursday’s heart, as if he could feel that easing. He probably could. “I always thought…” Morse began, and then trailed off. “Never mind.”

“Thought what? You can ask me anything, you know that.”

Morse toyed with the button on Thursday’s shirt absently. “It’s just… I always thought that a bond wasn’t complete until…”He trailed off again, voice faltering. “You know.”

Thursday stifled a laugh as he realised what Morse was asking. “You mean sex?”

Morse huffed in irritation as Thursday chuckled. “Well, that’s what I heard.”

“Where from? One of your opera stories of scandalous Sentinels with big moustaches carrying off helpless young Guides to have their wicked way with them?”

Morse smiled into his shirt. “Maybe.”

“Or Hollywood movies where Sentinels swing through the jungle scooping up plucky young Guides with their shirts torn in strategic places?”

“Sounds like you’re the one who’s been watching too many dreadful movies,” Morse observed.

Thursday chuckled and puffed away at his pipe for a while. “Did you really think the only way to cement a bond was with sex?”

“Everyone thinks that, don’t they?”

“Not anyone who knows anything about Sentinels and Guides,” Thursday said bluntly, and Morse hunched his shoulders, clearly displeased to have his knowledge on a subject called into question. 

“Ah, well,” Thursday conceded. “With your low opinion of Sentinels, I suppose it’s hardly surprising if you only remember the negative stuff, or prurient gossip.”

“So Sentinels and Guides don’t have sex?” Morse said disbelievingly.

“Course they do,” Thursday said. “If they want to. They’re only human. We’re only human,” he stressed. “And it’s a pretty intimate thing, to be joined to someone else so completely.”

Morse stroked his hand over Thursday’s shirt. “It is,” he agreed.

“So of course some take the bond further. But it’s by no means certain. Or required.” He looked down at Morse’s lean young hand fretfully smoothing the thin fabric over Thursday’s heart. “It’s all right, you know,” he said gently. “If you don’t feel that urge with me.”

Morse’s hand stilled. “I didn’t say that,” he mumbled.

“Or if you want to take it slowly,” Thursday continued. 

“What do I call you?” Morse blurted out and Thursday blinked at the change of subject. “Honestly, I’ve tried, but I just can’t think of you as Fred.”

Now Thursday laughed again, and Morse pulled back and frowned at him, before he quirked his lips and huffed a laugh. 

“Well you can’t keep calling me ‘sir’,” Thursday said.

“I don’t see why not,” Morse said, his chin setting a bit stubbornly. 

“Why don’t you try just Thursday?” Thursday suggested.

“I can’t call you that at work,” Morse said, scandalised. “Maybe I can call you sir at work, and Thursday at home?”

“Sentinels and Guides are equals, you know,” Thursday pointed out.

“But you’ll still outrank me,” Morse countered. 

“Not in every way that counts,” Thursday said. “Not in the bedroom,” he said slyly, and Morse rolled his eyes. But his checks were pink.

“Slow then,” Thursday murmured. “Do you want us to have our own rooms?”

Morse looked up, gazing into his eyes. “Not really. Do you?”

Thursday smiled and kissed his pink nose. “No. I’m used to cuddling you all night now.”

“Keeping me warm,” Morse smiled, laying his head back down.

“Tell you what,” Thursday proposed. “When you can call me something other than ‘sir’, we’ll think about moving on to more than cuddles. Hmm?”

Morse nodded.

“We’ll be all right, Morse,” Thursday said. “Won’t we?”

Morse nodded again, and his hand covered Thursday’s heart, warming the cold places inside him.

EPILOGUE I: Morse

Morse relaxed back in the armchair, his music soaring from the record player. He had a drink in his hand and an Oxford Mail crossword on the coffee table. All that was missing was his Guide, and he’d have everything he needed in life. Well, maybe some more of Mrs Strange’s steak and kidney pudding to look forward to would add to that contentment. He smiled to himself and sipped his scotch.

The neat little flat felt odd without Thursday in it, his heartbeat had become a kind of background noise for Morse wherever he was in this unfamiliar, temporary space. But Thursday was at Cowley Road, an old case had cropped up and he was needed. Morse tried not to resent being shut out, soon he would be fully accredited and he and Thursday could take up their work back at the nick.

Morse tried to imagine how it would be, returning to work as a Sentinel. To a desk in Thursday’s office instead of just outside the door. What kind of reaction would they get from the coppers they worked with? The powers that be might love the whole Sentinel Guide prestige, but Morse knew better than most that there was still a lot of misunderstanding and gossip about such pairs.

Someone was climbing the stairs and Morse focused his hearing, disappointed that it wasn’t Thursday’s heavy tread, even though he knew it was way too early for him to be back. These were a woman’s heels surely, light and steady. Morse paused with his drink at his lips. He knew that tread, although this was the first time he’d heard it as a Sentinel. And now his senses were all sharpening as he caught her scent, and the indrawn breath she took as she stopped at the door. He held his breath too, wondering if she’d change her mind about knocking, half hoping she would. But a moment later there was a firm rap and Morse carefully laid his glass down and stood. He smoothed the front of his shirt, straightened his tie and opened the front door.

“Miss Thursday,” he said, his voice even.

She looked at him for long moments and he looked back, resisting the urge to duck his head. Maybe Humphrey was right, maybe humans were just sophisticated animals, as he’d argued in one of their many lively discussions on the subject. Because surely his animal instinct now was not to look away and show weakness.

“Morse,” she said coolly. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” he said, stepping back. “I’m afraid your father is not here.”

“It’s you I came to see,” she interrupted. She walked in and paused in the small foyer, looking at the open lounge beyond. The little flat was spotless, light and airy. White washed walls and chrome and glass furniture. Not to Morse’s taste, but he was assured it was Sentinel friendly. 

“Nice,” she said. Morse could hear her heart beating hard in her chest and he deliberately turned down his hearing, hating the intrusion of being able to see past the face a person chose to show the world.

“Would you like a drink?” Morse said, turning the volume on the record player down a little.

“Thank you,” she said, and he poured her a measure of scotch and handed her the glass. Their fingers touched and he could feel the fine tremor in her hands. 

He looked away, picking up his own glass and gulping at it. Neither of them sat down.

“Well,” Miss Thursday said brightly. “I suppose I know now why you never asked me on a date.”

Morse tilted his head and looked at her. “Do you?”

“It was my father you wanted, and not me,” she said lightly, turning away and making a pretence of studying the books on the shelf.

Morse turned the glass in his hands, wondering what to say to that. It had been her father he wanted, although perhaps not in the sense she meant. He watched her, noting her hair was twisted at her nape in a sophisticated knot, and that she wore tiny pearl earrings and a matching necklace. 

“I didn’t imagine it though, did I?” she said, turning sharply on her heel to look at him. “There was something in the way you looked at me, that last morning.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Morse said carefully. 

“Aren’t you?” she said with a slight sneer. Morse was sorry to see it, such an expression didn’t belong on her usually cheerful face. But then she’d been through such a lot, he thought. The bank robbery, a friend dying virtually in her arms, being taken hostage. The guilt. “I’ve always liked you,” Morse said honestly. “But that’s because he loves you. You were precious to me, once removed,” he said, smiling a little. “For his sake.”

“Oh, for his sake,” Joan said bitterly. “It’s all for his sake, now. My mother is in bits, her life ruined, and that’s all for his sake too. ‘He can’t help it, love,’” Joan said, grimacing. “’I knew he was a Guide when I married him, love.’ It’s bloody ridiculous.” She drained her drink in one swallow and held the glass out for a refill.

Morse silently poured her another measure. 

“My mother is a damn sight more forgiving than I am, Morse,” Joan said. “But for all her brave words she’s crying herself to sleep every night. How do you feel about that?”

“How do you expect me to feel?” Morse said evenly. “I feel wretched. So does he.”

“And yet here you are,” Joan said, gesturing expansively around the neat little flat. “Tucked up all cosy with her husband while she has lawyers pressuring her to divorce him all nice and easy.”

“I’m sorry to hear she feels pressured,” Morse said. “I’ll speak with the Master of the SGG. It’s a difficult situation for everyone.”

“That’s a nice understatement.” Joan looked him up and down. “Did you do this all on purpose?” she demanded, a vulnerable expression in her eyes. “Did you stay close to my father so you’d emerge as a Sentinel?”

“No,” Morse said honestly. “I had no desire to ever emerge. I can honestly say it’s the last thing I ever wanted.”

“Then why did you stay?” Joan asked wildly. “When you knew Dad was your Guide, why did you...?

“But I didn’t know that,” Morse interrupted. “How could I know that? A Guide more than twenty years older than me? Happily married? I knew he was a Guide, yes, and that he was someone special to me, but I never thought in a million years that he would be my Guide. Or that he would ever be more to me than…”

“Than what?” Joan demanded. 

“I don’t know,” Morse said, frowning thoughtfully. “A mentor. A friend maybe, one day. The first person to really take me seriously in my work, to listen to me. Someone I admired. I knew he was a Guide, and that gave me comfort, but I swear on both our lives I never dreamt he’d be mine.”

Joan sat down on the lounge chair, staring at him in amazement. “I don’t believe you,” she said, but her eyes were wide and surprised. 

Morse sat down opposite her and leaned forward, holding his glass loosely, elbows on his knees. “I don’t know how to convince you,” he said. “You don’t know me well enough for me to ask for your trust, either way.”

She blinked at that, hand tightening on her glass.

“But you know your father,” Morse said. “You know he’d have done anything rather than hurt your mother, or you and Sam.”

“Anything but leave you,” Joan said dully.

Morse shrugged. “I think he’d have done that too, if it would have changed anything. I would have left him and disappeared if I’d thought it meant he could go back to you all and things could be as they were.”

“Then why don’t you?” Joan asked, her eyes filling with tears. 

Morse watched her as she groped in her bag for a hanky and pressed it to her face. "Because they can’t ever be what they were,” Morse said bluntly. “If your father had turned his back on his Sentinel and tried to live a half life with your mother, it would have broken him. No matter how hard he tried, he’d have grown to resent and hate her for keeping him from me.” Morse shrugged. “I know how that sounds, coming from me, but it’s just the truth.”

Joan sniffed, twisting the hanky in her trembling hands. “It’s not fair,” she said, seeming very young to Morse at that moment.

“No, it’s not,” he said, remembering his own mother’s tears after his father had walked away for them for his Guide. “It would be nice if the universe arranged itself neatly, and everyone lived happily ever after and no one was hurt.”

“Except the two of you are living happily ever after,” Joan accused. “It’s my mother that’s paying for it.”

“Do you think he’s not paying for it too?” Morse said, perhaps more sharply than he meant. “Do you think the grief and the guilt aren’t a weight he carries around in his heart every day? I can ease it for a time, but it’s always there, a stone in his chest. He lived his whole life with the emptiness of an unbonded Guide, and now that emptiness is gone, but the weight of grief has replaced it. He’ll bear it his life long. Now that’s not fair.” Morse said, and now it was his hands that shook as he finished his drink and poured himself another.

Joan just stared at him, her eyes wide and wet, as the music ended and the stylus jumped and stuttered at the end of the track. Morse stood and lifted it, switching the record player off. He leaned against the desk, looking down blindly at the turntable as it spun slowly to a halt.

“I’m taking mum to London,” Joan said abruptly. “We want to sell the house, and she’ll take her half after the mortgage is paid. A lot of her family still live in the East End, we’re going to get a flat and find work.”

“She’ll have all of the proceeds of the sale,” Morse said quietly, turning and leaning back against the table. “Not half.”

“You can’t speak for my father in this,” she said roughly.

“Yes, I can. In this I can, and he’ll say the same. She’ll take it all, and everything she wants from the house too.”

Joan looked at him again, her face unhappy, her eyes miserable and shadowed. “I came here hating you,” she said shakily. “I want to hate you.”

“Hatred hurts the hater more than the hated,” Morse said. “I should know.” 

Joan looked down at the drink in her hand as if she’d forgotten it was there. She put it on the coffee table, then opened her bag and dropped the crumpled hanky in it, shutting it again with a sharp snap.

“I’ll let you know about the house sale and the legal stuff,” she said, standing up and walking to the door, her spine very straight.

“The SGG will help you,” Morse said quietly. “Take their help. They’re a little ham fisted at times, but they do good work for Sentinels, Guides, and their families.” He beat her to the door and opened it, then leaned against it as she stood uncertainly in the little foyer. “You know,” Morse said, smiling at her sadly. “One thing we don’t talk about much. When there’s a big difference in the age of a Sentinel and Guide… Well. When one of us dies, the other usually follows, quite soon.”

Joan put her hand to her throat, an expression of stunned realisation on her face. 

“Life is too short to eat it up with guilt and hate, Miss Thursday,” he said gently. “When you’re settled, when you can, write your father a letter. Tell him you forgive him, even if you haven’t quite yet. It would mean the world to him.”

“I… I’ll think about it,” Joan said. She crossed the threshold and walked down the hall, and Morse stood and watched her. At the top of the stairs she paused indecisively, then turned and looked at him. “Look after him,” she said.

Morse nodded and waited until her footsteps had faded from his hearing before finally closing the door. Then he stood there in the quiet little flat for some time. 

EPILOGUE II: Shield

“They’re here,” Strange said, and the uniformed constables stepped back as the big car swept up in front of the modest block of flats. “Sir,” Strange said, nodding respectfully at the inspector. “Morse.”

“What have we got?” Thursday asked, following Morse and Strange into the dingy, narrow foyer and up the stairs.

“Ellen Threnody,” Strange read from his notebook. “Thirty two, unmarried, lived alone, worked as a translator at the Bodleian.” He stopped on the landing. “There’s blood,” he told Morse, and watched the Sentinel prepare himself, Thursday’s hand in the small of his back. “A lot of it. Her throat’s been cut.”

After a few moments Morse nodded and Thursday followed him into the small flat. Strange stayed in the doorway as Morse stood a few feet away from the corpse, still laying as she’d been found by a concerned work mate. 

It had taken three days absence before anyone had thought to look for Miss Threnody, so she was quite ripe in the summer heat, but Strange knew Morse had dialled down what he needed to, to get the job done. He wished he could.

Thursday was flipping through the contents of a small desk, and with a murmur so quiet Strange couldn’t hear it, he indicated something on a page of a small calendar. Morse studied it and nodded.

“Let DeBryn in now,” Morse said, and then paced down the short hall to the bedroom. Thursday handed the calendar to Strange and followed his Sentinel.

At first Strange had been unhappy at losing his spot as Thursday’s bagman due to an act of nature, but he’d been quickly reconciled when Morse had chosen him to be their point man. He even had a title. Shield. Shield to the Sentinel and Guide, and he’d taken a course and everything, something that wouldn’t hurt his promotion chances.

Morse stood by an open wardrobe door in the bedroom, tilting his head at the contents, then crouching down to pull out a pink sweater crumpled in the bottom.

“Is there a clothes hamper?”

“Bathroom.” Strange nodded to the tiny adjacent powder room. Part of his job was to have answers to questions like that, and he took it very seriously. In the bathroom Morse tipped over the hamper, crouched down and quickly separated the dirty clothes into two piles. Then he stood and looked down at the small, white handbasin. 

“Two women lived here,” he said.

“There’s only one name on the lease,” Strange said.

“They slept in that bed,” Morse said, pointing back into the bedroom. “Had sex with each other in it many times.”

“Explains the secrecy,” Strange muttered, making a note. 

“She packed her clothes, but accidentally left the sweater. Miss Threnody was a redhead and favoured bold colours, avoiding anything pink or pastel. That sweater isn’t her style or taste at all. She also forgot the dirty clothes in the hamper.” Morse nodded to the sink. “Someone scrubbed out the basin, I can smell the powdered cleanser. But there are still traces of blood in the u-bend.”

He crouched and looked under the rim of the little porcelain basin. “And they forgot to wipe underneath.”

“They always forget underneath,” Thursday said laconically. “Someone must have seen this other woman, no matter how careful they were.” He nodded at Strange. “You organise a house to house, see if we can get a description. We’ll take the mother, see if she knew anything about her daughter’s love life.”

“Is she our killer?”

Morse looked at him, eyes wide and thoughtful. “Perhaps. Or perhaps she knows who is and is running scared.”

“Either way, we need her,” Thursday said. He put his hand in the small of Morse’s back again, and led his thoughtfully frowning Sentinel back downstairs.

“That’s kind of eerie,” one of the technicians muttered as the pair drove off. “I’ll never get used to it.”

Strange tucked his notebook back in his pocket and watched his team until they were out of sight, already planning his attack on the house to house. “I think it’s brilliant,” he said proudly. 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: For those not familiar with the world of Sentinels and Guides, as gifted to us by the TV show The Sentinel, there have been whole rich, brilliant universes out there in fan fiction created around the premise of the show. I urge you to find a few episodes – and then devour some of the fic. You won’t be sorry.
> 
> Background: Sentinels are traditionally tribal watchmen with enhanced senses. Guides are are usually intelligent, empathetic and intensely loyal. They form bonds with each other, physical, spiritual and mental. In this universe Sentinels and Guides are well known and have existed under one name or another across the world all through history. 
> 
> My Excuse: I just saw something so unique in Morse, and so intensely protective in Thursday, that it struck me one day to write myself a fun little Sentinel story. So much for that!
> 
> Warning: If you love Mr & Mrs Thursday as much as I do – you’re not going to be happy with how this all goes down. Sorry!


End file.
